anyone with an @HOME cable connection is in store for possible hiccups in service. regional providers of service are varied in their handling and response.
from the New York Times - December 5, 2001
Cable Companies Sign On for Excite@Home Service
By SAUL HANSELL
xcite@Home (news/quote) signed an agreement yesterday afternoon with a group of cable companies, including the Comcast Corporation (news/quote) and Cox Communications (news/quote), to maintain high-speed Internet access for their customers.
The deal, which the companies have been working on since Friday, will provide approximately $355 million to tide Excite over for the next three months, while the two major companies create replacement networks. Of that figure, Cox and Comcast will each pay $160 million.
Excite has filed for bankruptcy protection, and a federal judge in San Francisco gave it permission on Friday to cancel its contracts with a number of cable companies, through which it provided high-speed service to 3.7 million people in North America.
AT&T (news/quote), which had the most customers of Excite@Home's service, was not involved in the deal yesterday. It broke off negotiations Friday after deciding it did not want to pay the price Excite was asking to continue service. Excite responded by cutting off service to 850,000 AT&T cable customers.
As of Monday, AT&T had connected 330,000 of those customers to a new high-speed network it has constructed over the last two months. The company said yesterday that it planned to connect another 227,000 customers today.
AT&T, which was also the largest shareholder of Excite@Home, had agreed to buy its high-speed network for $307 million. People close to AT&T's planning now say that it is extremely unlikely that the company will proceed with that purchase. Advisers working with Excite@Home acknowledge that the sale to AT&T is no longer valid and are preparing to search for another buyer for the Excite network.
The deal reached yesterday will have to be submitted to the bankruptcy court for approval, and Excite's creditors will have the option of objecting.
Lawyers involved in the negotiations said they expected that the unsecured creditors would agree to the deal but that the bondholders — who have a lower priority than the unsecured creditors — were likely to object and demand more money from the cable companies.
In the meantime, other providers of high-speed Internet service rushed to capture customers from AT&T and other companies affected, and offered discounts and rebates to attract new subscribers.
Edited By iBug on Dec. 06 2001 at 1:50
