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Cox And Comcast To Dump @Home

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the at-the-railing dept.

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."

8 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Comcast is rolling their own. by nixon · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  2. "Unnamed ISP" by Phroggy · · Score: 4, Informative

    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;
  3. Great At Home Service by mmaddox · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!?

    1. Re:Great At Home Service by Fishstick · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oh, great... just what I want to hear after 'upgrading' to @home just this morning. I was one of the fortunate souls to be a MediaOne customer in a market that was bought by AT@T. They had left the cable modem service alone while they managed to botch the video end, now that the video is horribly 'upgraded', it is now time to upgrade the internet users.

      So, having a linux machine connected happily to the cable modem for the last two years. I was a bit apprehensive to do anything (but hey, a nice $40 gift for my trouble if I do it early!).

      So, since their wide range of supported OSes (windows) does not include Linux (it is just DHCP and TCP/IP, right?), I cobbled together a machine from old parts lying around and installed NT and started to hold my breath.

      First, I got the box to DHCP itself to the old MediaOne service and downloaded the 'upgrade'. It gave me a service# (new hostname) and fiddled with the network card settings and asked me to reboot. I rebooted and it came up with a new lease, showing the @home domain and such, but nothing worked (couldn't ping the gateway, dns servers, nothing).

      So my first call went to 1st-tier which was people who have worked for MediaOne in the local office who were very friendly, but not really able to do much from the script in front of them other than ask me to type in 'winipcfg' (this is NT, one of your supported OSes). They couldn't figure it out and gave me a number in Denver (I'm in Chicago) to ask for 2nd-teir.

      What a bunch of assholes. "Sorry sir, it must be something wrong with your PC". I had to sit on hold, get hung up on and re-explain everything until I was blue in the face. "God, do I have to start over with 'what is in your control panel?' again!?" "Sir, how can I troubleshoot _your_ problem if you won't tell me some vasic information?" "but I've already gone through this 4 or 5 times this morning already!" *click*

      I finally gave up and called the local support number again.

      This time I got lucky and hit on someone who actually seemd to give a crap about customer service _AND_ was able to work outside the script and figure out what was wrong. Yep, the @HOME database had incorrect data about my Account (I live in Rolling Meadows, but I have a Palatine zip code) and so the wrong router was getting my info. She got her super to go in and override the setup and I was in business. Once I got all the config details written down from the NT box, I booted up my Linux box, changed a couple configs and got pump to get an IP and I was done.

      I'm going to write a letter to AT&T @HOME letting them know what I think of their 2nd tier support in Denver and that the local guys were able to solve a problem that Dever should have but couldn't because they are ASSHOLES.

      (Myra, if you read this - god bless you dear)

      --

      There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
      Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.

  4. nytimes by pcardoso · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  5. I got a hint of something like this a while ago... by hiryuu · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...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.
  6. Meanwhile, on other cablemodem services... by barzok · · Score: 3, Informative
    TimeWarner RoadRunner sent a letter out this week to all subscribers informing us that as of October 1, 2001, our monthly bill is going up from $39.95/month to $44.95/month. They go on to tell us what great guys they are because this is the first ever rate increase (in probably 4 years of service locally) and that this is money to fund infrastructure improvements.

    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.

  7. Not til mid 2002 by alanjstr · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.