Excite@Home May Have To Call It Quits

Plazm writes: "C|net has a story (printer friendly version, of course) that just cropped up this morning about Excite@Home being in financial trouble. Will they befall the same fate as Covad and Loki? Good thing I just purchased my cable modem and broadband service through @Home last week so they could go out of business the next."

Comments

Given they're reputation...

[r1ch]

for (no) customer service, it's not really surprising. I have never heard anything positive said about excite@home

sucks to be an Excite@Home customer

[Rackemup]

I know they're not out of business yet, but with the threat of being delisted from NASDAQ in the very near future things dont look good... times like this I'm glad to be Canadian, and living in an area that only gives you 2 choices, Cable or DSL. Having less choice isn't really a good thing, but it's better to have 2 large, stable companies to choose from then 6 or 7 smaller ones with uncertain futures.

I'm sure someone else *cough*AOL*cough* wouldn't mind expanding their own network by taking over Excite@Home...

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the problem is, they don't know how to run a business. They're just the next wave of dotcoms, essentially. They don't realize that you shouldn't start throwing money at everything you possibly can. You gotta make your revenue exceed your expenses, otherwise you fail.

That's really such a simple concept, I don't know why no new businesses seem to understand that.

Giant Honking Market Opportunity

[dew]

If you wanted to get into the broadband deployment arena, now would be a really good fscking time to do so.

Fiber pipes nationally are wildly underlit nationally, DWDM technology is continuing to advance at a breakneck pace, and, relevant to this article, you'll have have no more competition, save Baby Bell DSL offerings.

Team up with the power companies! They own the rights of way to metro and suburban wiring ways and "telephone" poles already. (A "telephone" pole should be called a "power" pole because most of the time the telephone company is leasing space from the power company to string telephone wires on it!) They're being hit bad by this whole deregulation bit and are losing quite a bit of money. They'd be delighted to find a potential new revenue stream, especially in a market that's clamoring for access, but has no outlet.

Supply and Demand -- there's a dwindling supply and a growing demand. Market forces dictate that someone's gotta have the "can-do" to get the power companies to plug people in.

(BTW, I am not talking about using the power lines for transmission of data (many issues w/that), I'm talking about turning power companies into ISPs by stringing fiber along their rights of way.)

Someone go out there and do it!

Re:Why?

[Alien54]

The way I see it:

1. have a dotcom business plan. Original incestors get in, get rich, sell out.
2. Adopt the typical bean counter attitude of "Anything that is not a profit is an expense" Start cutting expenses. (I am reminded of an old cartoon where picture used to illustrate reducing everything to core elements was an apple with all of the meat of the apple eaten away, leaving just the core)
3. Have some competitors who are willing and able to help push you over the edge by being slow on service to your valued accounts
4. have a business plan that accumulates profits too far in the future.
5. etc.

You get the idea

(yes I see the typo. I was going to fix it, then thought better of it)

- - -
Radio Free Nation
is a general news site based on Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -

broadband and dotcoms

[jpostel]

what bugs me about this (and dotcoms) is that the 'normal' business model (the one i learned in college) works on a five year profitability timetable. the idea is that if you can not turn a profit in the first five years, then your business plan does not work. some dotcoms came and went within three years! how does one

A. get money for a business plan
B. spend 25% of it on stupid stuff
C. not get shot by investors

broadband providers (other than the bells or existing cable providers) seem to be dropping like flies. i know that @home is in bed with att, but what is wrong with @home's business plan? are they trying to grow too fast? are they buying expensive chairs? does it cost more to provide the service than they are charging?

i personally know that covad has an excuse, because i have dealt with verizon (bellatlantic, nynex, and nj bell before them) on several occasions. in nyc the folks doing installations have been known to disconnect existing service while installing new service and then claim that they will have to charge you to fix the existing service. covad got shafted left and right by verizon.

until the telecommunication providers are deregulated and re-regulated with realistic rules (many are still from the breakup of ATT 17 years ago) there will be little government help with consumer broadband needs.

Re:right time?

[supabeast!]

Excite@home is not going broke from their cable internet service. They are going broke from keeping up their stupid excite.com. They spend millions of dollars each month keeping a worthless portal that loses money at an astounding rate, for no reason other than that they might be able to sell it at some point, if anyone is stupid enough to invest in a failed web site. Excite needs to immediately shut down all things related to excite.com PERMANENTLY, lay off all the staff related to it, and then raise their cable rates.

Of course, being a bastion of the new economy, they will continue with their idiotic business plan, allowing their dotcom dreams to shut down what could be a successful broadband operation.

Re:The problem with broadband in the US

[biltmore]

Anyone paying up to $2,600 for a T1 is stupid.
There are many companies offering services for less that $1000 for unlimted 1.54Mbps with a CIR of 512K. I have even seen a company offering unlimited 1.54 Mbps for $549. Both these pricing uncluding local loop charges.

Congratulations are in order.

[BigBlockMopar]

Ironic that you now face being shunted into Microsoft environments - or out of technology -by the free market that your philosophy extolls as the engine of excellence.

Ironic and sad, yes.

Both laissez-faire capitalism and communism rely on the existence of humans that don't exist yet: the former on perfectly rational, completely informed agents, the latter on completely fair, totally socialized comrades. The failures of each system are based on the fact that humans are not that easy to reinvent.

Congratulations, you have done what few lack the ability to do: change my viewpoint.

Through your concise and relevant comment, you have managed to make me re-think a couple of points. While I'm still fundamentally a Libertarian, there has long been a need to have some sort of government intervention in the Microsoft monopoly, a rare exception to my usual philosophy of letting the free market decide.

But this does reinforce the need for a truly impartial government to oversee all facets of the running of a society; as one of the few moderates who hasn't simply posted "socialism is best" or some other similar rant, your point has reminded me that the balance does remain the best system. Certainly, in Canada, all levels of government provide substantial roadblocks to creating your own business, as an example; controls need to remain (as much as I loathe to admit it), though they should be simpler, more streamlined and efficient than those currently in place.