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Cox And Comcast To Dump @Home
randolph reports the drop of yet another shoe in the ongoing @Home tale: "The New York Times reports
that Cox and Comcast are ready to stop providing @Home's internet service, replacing it with some unnamed internet service. The story also comments 'AT&T may let At Home file for bankruptcy before making another investment in the company.'
Registration required, yada yada."
I had a @home cable modem, but they cut off my service for running my linux software FTP and WWW server!!! They suck! NOT GNU-friendly, that's for sure!
Linux Rulez!!!!!!!!!!!
I talked to some Comcast people earlier today about this. They're going to definitely drop @Home, but service won't be ending for their customers. They plan to continue offering high-speed internet access through their own network called "iComcast".
I guess they're pretty serious about as they're already readying content here.
What, me worry?
I've always heard Cox was really stingy about letting you run servers, and many people got kicked off.
I called RoadRunner and asked, and I talked to some idiot that said there was no problem.
I got his full name, the date, and everything,
if they deny me service, I could probably sue.
I was contacted recently by a Comcast recruiter (in the Philadelphia area) looking to staff up a new Comcast networking group. She said that they were dropping their relationship with @Home and were going to do it themselves. I don't know about Cox but Comcast is definitely taking the DIY route.
According to a source at Cox, Cox has been thinking of offering consumers a choice of multiple ISPs. Cox doesn't like @Home any more than the rest of us, but they had an exclusive contract, which it seems has now expired, or will soon expire. Cox has already done testing with Earthlink, so it's pretty much guaranteed that Earthlink will be one of the ISPs Cox offers. Whether or not they'll actually offer consumer choice remains to be seen, and I don't know about Comcast or AT&T.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
So, my local Comcast service is going to get weird for a bit, eh? Doesn't really surprise me, considering the level of service At Home provides.
Case in point: Bad cable modem - I tested it. Called At Home, hung up on. Called back, talked to 1st level tech, who hung up on me WHILE giving me the support call no. Called back, got call no., was transferred to second level, who hung up on me. Called back, tried to get directly to second level support, 1st level tech reluctantly sent me to 2nd level, who said hello and hung up on me. Turned out it was a switching problem, and I finally got a direct number (instead of the local office number-transfer) and called back. At Home (in Toronto; I'm in Tallahassee, FL) finally decided to route a repairman to bring me a new modem...an appointment 3 weeks later. Called my local Comcast office the next day, said, "I want to swap out my cable modem." Next day? Done. No worries.
The question: Why couldn't At Home do the exact same thing?
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
....I've got Comcast@Home! They wouldn't dare cut off my elite broadband service and relegate me back to the dark hole of 56KBaud modem service, would th
Alan Cox quitting a distracting venture means he has more time to work on the linux kernel.
You can read the story here, no registration required, courtesy of the Washington Post.
THats what they get for dropping all the VCD/Divx newsgroups!!!
I asked for the estimated time when my service would resume, and they had to transfer me to a level 2 tech support desk for me to get that information.
Of course none of this tops what the installation guy tried to pull on me (this was before self install options). I had just bought a new windows box, and we were getting @Home service. When the guy came to hook up the cable modem, he disabled the network card (dunno if it was an accident or on purpose). Needless to say, the service wasn't working when he tried it out. He said there was a problem with my network card and that I would have to buy one from them for $80. I told him to look in the hardware profiles, and he did. Sure enough, the network card was disabled in the hardware profiles. I told him to re-enable the network card, but he refused and told me my card was simply not working with their service, and I'd have to buy one of theirs. I was pretty annoyed, but he kept trying to push me buying a network card from them. To get rid of him, I told him I'd call the manufacturer and then call him back. He agreed and left. I then re-enabled the card, and naturally everything worked fine.
To this day I don't know if the guy was just an idiot, or if he did it in purpose. Either way, it doesn't speak very well for @Home. Unfortunately, they were the only broadband provider in the area at the time, so I was stuck with them... or 56K.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
as usual, replace the 'www' with a 'archive' to bypass the useless sign in form.
or click here to have the article with a minimum of fuss.
...when I called Comcast sales to ask about @Work. They said, under @Home, all they could offer me in my area was a managed (and overpriced) connection for multiple workstations, no servers allowed, and bandwidth caps still in place. When I expressed some disappointment and incredulity at (a) the service, and (b) the price, they said it was all they could do under @Home, but if I waited, they would have alot wider range of services at better prices available "when we're offering our own service." Hmmm...
And this before I sat and thought about @Home's financial troubles...
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
Shaw has pretty much dumped @home too...
Given @Home's policy of anti-customer service, it's no wonder that they're in such dire financial shape. I have Road Runner through Time Warner (and my Dad has Road Runner through Cox, from where I am this weekend) and I've never had any problems with either.
I never thought Cox@Home would do terribly well anyways. It always sounded like a dildo delivery service to people.
However, there haven't been any infrastructure improvements that anyone's seen, bandwidth is now pretty harshly capped, especially on the upstream, and mail service gets flaky for some people on a regular basis.
I have a co-worker who hasn't had a RR connection for a month! They keep sending techs out, they've replaced everything in her house and it still flakes out an hour after the tech leaves! More than once they've been told "we'll send our top person out here to look at it" and that never happens. RR refuses to check anything beyond the walls of their house, but now that everything's been replaced with known good equipment, it's fairly obvious the problem isn't there.
Meanwhile, they're dropping the price of a second IP from $10/month to $5/month - so if you had already bought one, you won't see any price change in your bill. I think they know a very large number of people are running NAT boxes & routers and want to push them away from it.
Take a look at http://www.pressnews.net/cmcsk/home.htm
To summarize:
COMCAST Makes Proposal To Merge With AT&T Broadband
Offers $58 Billion for Core Broadband Assets Plus Additional Value for Non-Core Investments
Looks like Comcast was using @home until they could partner or buy another broadband network.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
My office moved us from a central office location to home offices in March in a cost saving move. Our group here in Oklahoma is considered mission critical to the corporate mission, and we have Cox@home. Last week I called them to express concerns over the falling stock prices, having watched this same scenerio play out with covad. The person I talked to in commerical sales discussed my concerns with his superiors who indicated that Cox was working on creating it's own ISP as alternative to @home. He indicated that testing was underway, and should they drop @home the transfer would be tranparent to the user-base (sure,buddy).
We have limited options here in Oklahoma, with the best next choice being Sprint Wireless Broadband, which has all the evil caps and limits.
Where is that TCP/IP carrier pigeon again?
For the sake of Peace, the Sword.
...as to who will be the new ISP for Comcast and Cox cable modem customers.? Any /.'ers care to speculate who it'll be?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT Call 1-800-555-CARL
Cox, Comcast End Pacts with ExciteAtHome
It goes on to name the new alliances for Cox and Comcast, along with some other details.
The partnership won't dissolve until June 2002, so do have time to get another ISP. Or, they could choose to make another deal with @Home between now and then.
I have Cox Cable in Kansas which gets me RR. It's been ok except for a number of times where Cox had a bad case of router flap upstream of me and I couldn't get anyone at their tech support competent enough to understand the information I was giving. If DSL reached my building, I would have switched after that week of hell. It appears that there is no tier 2 in their tech support line. At the end I was finally pissed enough that I asked about what the procedure was for terminating an account. HE asked who's account. I told him my own. The guy hung up on me. Nice. They also don't have any way for the average Joe Admin to reach any security, abuse, or incident response team. You have to email them, never get a response, and hope they actually get off their asses and do something. The last time I reported 3 HipCrime IPs to them, it took them over two weeks for something to be done and I never heard about a final resolution. From one network professional to another, that is unacceptable. I think it's time for a bitch-list for them.
From the end of the article:
That would be an improvement, yes?
DSL and cable modems aren't your stereotypical no income coming is "maybe we'll get someone to buy pet food on the net" dot coms. They provide a service that people want - to the point where they occasionally have trouble meeting the demand for new customers - and are willing to pay for. How can they constantly be going bankrupt?
Is it just me or does that icomcast.net site have nothing on it worth reading? Maybe it's fact that I'm using "high speed internet access". It's actually pretty decent (not as fast as cable), but has a proprietery browser. All you need is an outdated email account.
Comcast made an unsolicited bid that was well below what AT&T paid for the same assests.
Not surprisingly, AT&T rejected Comcast's offer.
You can read about it here.
Comcast has not given up as you can see from this news report.
Finally, Cox has emerged as a player for AT&T broadband, as detailed in this story.
I don't believe Comcast's effort s to divorce themselves from @Home and acquire AT&T broadband are related. Especially given that AT&T broadband is the major shareholder in @Home, so by buying AT&T broadband, Comcast would become @Home's largest shareholder.
Steve
The major cost of network infrastructure is equipment which depreciates over months not years and deployment which is a sunk cost. Having laid out several billion to build the network @Home's creditors would probably be lucky to get a few tens of million back in a liquidation.
Only companies that can use the infrastructure where it is are the existing cable cos. So my guess is that @Home will end up being bought out by the cable cos and split up amongst the cable companies with Excite being flogged off to one of the Internet companies that makes money.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I have Cox Express Cable Internet service and it is working great (for the most part). It is not @home thankfully nor is it a RR service. So far they have not put any annoying rules or blocked any services.
It'd be a fscking miracle, too...
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
to PowerLink before its @Home contract runs out. You can read more about it on DSL's Adelphia forum.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
At least this is what was sent to me.
Date: 24 Aug 2001 01:55:07 -0000
From: "Cox Communications San Diego"
Subject: A message from Cox regarding Excite @Home
You may have recently seen reports in the media on the financial condition of Excite @Home, our partner in delivering high-speed Internet service to the San Diego area. We understand that this recent media coverage might cause concern about the future of your service. Please know that we are committed to providing you with reliable high speed Internet service now and in the future.
Excite @Home has not notified us that their situation will render them unable to perform their obligations under our existing business arrangement, nor has it made any announcement that it intends to discontinue service. We remain committed to our existing partnership with Excite @Home, and Excite @Home has reiterated its own commitment to providing outstanding service and support to its 3.7 million subscribers.
Cox?s high speed Internet service is an integral part of our product offerings, and we are dedicated to maintaining uninterrupted high speed Internet service. As always, we will continue to keep you informed on any upcoming changes with your Cox @Home service. Thank you.
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
it's YOUR responsibility to know what's in the
@home AUP, and since it specifically points out that
servers are NOT allowed, their actions were completely
justified. I personally think this sucks, but
hey, if you're gonna break rules, don;t complain
when you get caught.
On another front, please get a fucking clue before
spouting your "at-home is anti-gnu...waaaah".
the fact of the matter is, @home doesnt give a
flying fuck if you're running httpd and ftpd on
windows, linux, mac, etc. they do NOT allow it, period!
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Comcast is snatching up large numbers of infrastructure-
type people in the Philadelphia area and Trenton,
NJ area to build this beast out. They have already
recruited two of my friends, and I was thinking
about trying to get my foot in the door, but the
commute is just too long for me =(
I really hope they create a nice, clean, SIMPLE
network that will beat the pants off most others...
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Has any other Cox@Home customer been having strange problems with web access in the last few days (specifically all HTTP connections?) Occasionally, out of the blue, I lose my connection to the web, but my Usenet traffic carries on normally. I confirmed it's not a DNS problem....BUT I have also been tinkering with my router a bit, just wanted to know if the Cox@Home breakup had anything to do with recent performance...Thx
-jc
While @home has been good overall, for me, the few problems I had were filled with incredible amounts of frustration.
;)
For example, earlier this year, my cable connection started stalling regularly. Every 5 minutes or so, all data going in and out would just... die. It wouldn't all come in at once, it just went into a black void, never to return. After about 90 seconds, the connection would work again.
I called @home about it, and after 2 hours of digging through lame menus and finally getting hold of a human being, they did nothing really. They pinged my cable modem and said "everything looked fine," which of course it did since I wasn't experiencing that humongous drop in data transfer at that moment. Then they handed me some BS about waiting three hours at least while they "attempted to fix something that might be related." I.E. Buzz off, we're tired of pretending we want to help you.
That problem eventually got resolved on its own, but it would have been nice if they hadn't given me the run-around and treated me like some newbie.
I love Comcast, @home is another matter. While my cable connection has been great aside from the months that problem went on, I wouldn't be saddened to have to use another provider... So long as they're Linux compatible, that is.
You can configure your web server to listen on a different port. Use your members.home.com webspace (or whatever you have) to host a page that redirects to your IP address/port combo. Then use a redirection service like MyDomain to do URL pointing to your webspace. Viola! You're back up and running.
It's not as clean as having DNS point to your IP address, but it's the only workaround I've found for the port 80 blocking.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
2) Are you calling angry that they're hanging up on you?
3) We have no office in Toronto, though Comcast Tier 1 has one in Sault Sainte Marie, ONT. Nice folks. (Rogers Cable might have an office in Toronto, though...)
Help us build a better map!
Adelphia PowerLink is (don't be surprised now...) @Home!
I answer calls from Adelphia markets as Adelphia@Home, and they ask if they reached PowerLink support. They have, just Adelphia is calling it PowerLink as sort of a marketroid hype thing.
Help us build a better map!
According to a letter I just received, addressed simply to Comcast @Home Customer (obviously before the breakup), rates are going up Oct. 1st in Philadelphia suburbs. $32.95 to $39.95 ($44.95 if you don't have cable TV).
Curious as to what happens to my @home.com e-mail address, too.
Moon Pie. What a time to be alive. (Frostillicus)
Dear Customer,
This week, we notified Excite @Home that we have exercised our right to terminate our existing agreement, with the termination to take effect on June 4, 2002. By taking this action, Cox will have the ability to acquire greater control over our network and to assume many of the responsibilities currently held by Excite @Home. We anticipate that we will work together with Excite @Home to smoothly transition these responsibilities between now and June 4, 2002.
Our number one priority is continuing to deliver reliable high speed Internet service to you. the recent announcements that Excite @Home has issued regarding its financial status have strengthened our belief that our notice of termination was necessary to give us the flexibility we need to make alternative arrangements to provide high speed Internet service to our customers. By managing more elements in our high speed Internet service, we will be in a much better position to control the quality of our service and deliver greater customer satisfaction.
Several months ago, Cox began preparing a strategic plan to exercise a greater degree of control over many of the components that make up our high speed Internet service. The current events surrounding Excite @Home have simply accelerated this initiative. The Cox-managed service to which we will be transitioning may include a role for Excite @Home; however, any such role will be defined by a new agreement.
At this time, we do not plan to institute any immediate changes to the features and functions we provide through our existing Cox @Home service, although we do believe that between now and June 4, 2002, there will be some modifications. Please know that we will make every effort to make this transition as smooth as possible, and that we will notify you of any action or changes in advance. Our primary goal is to provide you with the high quality, reliable, high speed Internet service you have come to enjoy.
Portions of charter, maybe all of charter even, have already started to do this. Here locally you can still get @home, but there is no incentive to do so.. the price is the same for their own higher speed service (which seems to get renamed every couple months) so the only reason someone would want @home is if they're moving into town and already have @home... then they can keep their address... assuming the idiots @home can figure out how to do that (I know several times they weren't able to do it right, causing all sorts of problems for the users.) Of course anyone moving into town that already has @home is probably in no hurry to repeat that mistake.
What about those of us who have "@home" email addresses? Am I going to (again) email eveyone I know to change it? I can't use my own demain thanks to the acurate replyto add rule...
I started out with worldnet and moved up to
Cox@Home when I switched to rolling my own cigs
and takeing the money I saved and investing it in
broadband. I new from the begining that I was
not going to be with worldnet forever so I got a
yahoo email address and used their pop3
forwarding to point to my att.net address.
Then the day came for me to change over. I went
over to yahoo and reset the forwarding to my new
@home address and as far as anyone who did not
look at headers was concerned I had never made
the move.
Looks like next year I will have to do the same
thing.
Too bad I will have to resync the news groups as
the nntp servers change. Well we cant win them
all.
Ascii artist &
In even bigger news Shaw Cablesystems GP is dumping excite@home as well. Shaw Cablesystems being the largest highspeed internet provider in North America(if not the world) with 600,000+ subscribers!
With good reason too, since @home has always had mail server problems since day one, and constant downtime of mail and web servers.
So in response Shaw has rebuilt it's own infrastructure and switched over so it no longer relies on @home for any services.
If your wondering why I know, it's because i work for Shaw.
While I realize that this depends on the cable company, I have a story that might be of interest.
In Canada, there are three major cable companies, Shaw, Rogers, and Cogeco, the latter being irrelevant.
Rogers Communications does cellphones, video stores, cable TV, cable internet, and so on. the Cable division is the only division that actually brings in revenue. The rest are mismanaged sinkholes (the cable is mismanaged, but not a sinkhole). As a result, you pay lots of money for not too great service. Cable internet is done through @home. Customer support is nonexistant. Service is pathetic. The network goes down like a kamikazee
Shaw is the king. They spend as much money as they have to. They also love their customers (and for good reason).
Rogers and Shaw agreed to a deal a while back. Shaw would take BC from Rogers (since Rogers pissed off everyone in BC with a stupid idea to screw them out of more money), and Rogers would get Ontario (since who wants Ontario anyways?).
I woke up one morning, long after figuring that nothing was going to change because of this deal, since nothing had, and my computer was no longer online. Debugged, debugged, traced, couldn't figure out why. Then, finally, I managed to figure it out.
I had the wrong IP, going through the wrong gateway on the wrong subnet of the wrong network. Whee.
After getting pump installed (hard to do in Debian if you have no network access or CD), I almost came. My highest speed of the last two weeks, 80 kbps (average 25) was blown away by my daily dist-upgrade, which went at about 325. This became my average, with peaks at 486 kilobytes/second. Oh yes, this new network was worth it.
The @home network is, at best, pathetic. Being routed from BC to Seattle, California, then out of the @home network into the public networks to make my way back up to Seattle, then BC, then into the telco's network to get to a friend's DSL a half-hour drive away is stupid at best.
Don't expect uninterrupted service, but when my ISP did this, it was a godsend in the truest sense of the word.
Now, if I can only figure out which @home server my @home address is going to (since I have accounts on three different mail servers, only one of which gets the mail sent to the account which should have been deleted two months ago), I'll be happy.
--Dan
AT&T broadband is mostly CableTV. They too use @home for their ISP.
I think history has proven that large ISP's simply cannot provide the quality of service that small or local ones can. I've never heard an end-user praise of @home, though I've not used it myself. Both ISP's I use are small and both provide snappy customer service and reliable bandwidth. Furthermore, the more small technology companies we have (in the US), the more that technology will be usurped from large corporations which tend to mismanage it and the less power corporate lobbyists will have to push bad laws.
Companies are getting tired of @home here in the great white north as well. Shaw, who covers ALL of western Canada (from Vancouver to Thunder Bay, Ontario) are dropping @home when their contract runs up fall of next year.
I'm a TSR for Shaw and I can tell you that there are a few really good reasons for this. The major problem is the mail servers. Every year in my town, university students migrate here from rural areas and all of them want shaw@home. The mail servers go down enough during the summer, but come fall they just seize up and die. Almost every single day they go down and it reflects really poorly on us as a company.
To deal with this (among many other) problems, we've created our own IDC, and are slowly switching everything over to use it. We've already got our installers setting people up with the new @shaw.ca email addresses, and have all our customer's @home.com emails reserved for them at shaw.ca.
I never had shaw@home before I started working for shaw, but I am very impressed with it as a user. My download speeds are consistently around 300-500kb/s and the only outages that I've had are planned outages I've gotten emails about a week in advance. I know not everbody's experience has been the same, but I can say with confidence that we do do our very best here in Saskatchewan when things do break down. All the geeks here in TSR-land love their jobs, and do our best every time. I'm sure anybody from Saskatchewan who has dealt with us can tell you the same. :)
Oh, and about how too many people in a node can slow you down, that's just not true in Saskatchewan. Our head-end tech just throws more hardware at it if a node slows down past where 'he' thinks its acceptable.
Sorry for proselytizing, but I'm just impressed. And I'm NOT getting paid for writing this (although I am writing this between calls!).
and I'm just going to set peoples homepage to slashdot.org, and get them mail accounts from netscape.com. If anyone wants original content, I'll tell them to submit their own stories.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
I LOVE @HOME DAMNIT!!!!!
Why are they losing money? I mean shit, everybody signs up for it the second that it comes into town. Mabye @Home should stop with the deployment or at least make local cable co' pay for it in the entirity (if @Home does not already do that) and just be happy with the revenue that they currently have coming in.
DAMNIT @HOME ROCKS!
What the FUCKING HELL is causing this major lose of money?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Comcast and Cox arn't the only ones. Up here in Canada Shaw has been working on dumping @Home for a while now, and have just started to Roll things out. I can tell you from experience with doing Tech support for @Home and Road Runner, that the problems people are mentioning are not limited to @Home, There just seems to be a problem with Cable modems in the States. All I can say is thank God for the CRTC
When I heard this I was both sad to see that the thing they tried hard to achieve (home broadband) was falling
through but I also saw a bright side of Comcast's iComcast coming. Which is no big deal for most people but I
lived in a rural area so @home thought that 2 way cable was a dumb Idea and my surronding area (30 min
drive in all directions of @home service)was one way telco modems. which goes to show one thing that if you
take only so much money and you dump it all to expanding a network so massive that you make it crappy you will
fail as my older teachers always said its quailty not quanity. so now iComcast will more than likely upgrade
and I'll have to get a summer broad band connects for when school is out
Dear Customer,
_ __ _____________________
This week, we notified Excite @Home that we have exercised our right to terminate our
existing agreement, with the termination to take effect on June 4, 2002. By taking this
action, Cox will have the ability to acquire greater control over our network and to
assume many of the responsibilities currently held by Excite @Home. We anticipate
that we will work together with Excite @Home to smoothly transition these
responsibilities between now and June 4, 2002.
Our number one priority is continuing to deliver reliable high speed Internet service to
you. the recent announcements that Excite @Home has issued regarding its financial
status have strengthened our belief that our notice of termination was necessary to give
us the flexibility we need to make alternative arrangements to provide high speed
Internet service to our customers. By managing more elements in our high speed
Internet service, we will be in a much better position to control the quality of our
service and deliver greater customer satisfaction.
Several months ago, Cox began preparing a strategic plan to exercise a greater degree
of control over many of the components that make up our high speed Internet service.
The current events surrounding Excite @Home have simply accelerated this initiative.
The Cox-managed service to which we will be transitioning may include a role for
Excite @Home; however, any such role will be defined by a new agreement.
At this time, we do not plan to institute any immediate changes to the features and
functions we provide through our existing Cox @Home service, although we do believe
that between now and June 4, 2002, there will be some modifications. Please know that
we will make every effort to make this transition as smooth as possible, and that we will
notify you of any action or changes in advance. Our primary goal is to provide you
with the high quality, reliable, high speed Internet service you have come to enjoy.
_______________________________________________
ubi dubium ibi libertas.
Finally, someone close to home that's also a Linux advocate. I live off of Street Rd. (You should know where that is in lower Bucks). I tried finding contact info, but your e-mail isn't in your bio. Mail me at SomeoneGotMyNick@tvlamb.com