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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 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 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
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.
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
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?
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/
Cox has already done testing with Earthlink (which went well on all accounts, supposedly), so I think it would be fairly safe to think Cox will be using Earthlink, at least in some capacity...
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Where is that TCP/IP carrier pigeon again?
IP over Avian Carriers is specified by RFC 1149, updated by RFC 2549. The Bergen LUG made a prototype implementation, which /.
covered
last April.
Ping time was about an hour,
with 50% packet loss.
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
Not Cox@home, but @home in generally. They probe servers for open services. It's rather simple to block, just deny all incoming from @home blocks, or deny all incoming period, and use a stateful firewall. I've got a ton of workstations here going through an OpenBSD machine running squid (I've got a business SDSL aswell, but @home is vastly faster =), so I proxy AIM, Web, FTP, etc. All the media intensive protocols.
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
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.
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 &
AT&T broadband is mostly CableTV. They too use @home for their ISP.
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
The problem is, what if i just want an ftp server for my person use? Yes, i have found having that ability to be very useful. Why not just limit bandwidth to something reasonable?
You're right about Toronto. My bad. I was simply extrapolating, considering the FIRST LEVEL SUPPORT TECH SAID SHE WAS IN ONTARIO. So, I guess we both have a wrong and a right, eh?
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?