Chapter 11 For Excite@Home

n8twj writes: "According to this story at CNET News, Excite@Home, the leading provider of broadband Internet access, said Friday it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and sell its high-speed network to AT&T for $307 million in cash." jgbrown adds: "@Home files for Chapter 11, they are going to sell their assets to AT&T unless they get a higher offer. Here is a Yahoo News link." An Anonymous Coward adds a link to a story at cnnfn.com." Just like Loki and Exodus, this doesn't mean that Excite@Home has dropped off the face of the earth -- it does mean that are seeking legal protection from creditors in an attempt to reorganize.

Comments

Letter From Rogers to it's customers

[D0ughB0y]

September 29, 2001

To: All Rogers @Home high speed Internet customers

A couple of weeks ago we made a commitment to keep you updated on any
developments regarding Excite @Home in the U.S.

Yesterday Excite @Home announced that it has agreed to sell its high-speed
Internet access assets to AT&T, pending court approval. We are very pleased
with this announcement as Rogers has worked well with AT&T in the past and
continues to do so. As you may know, AT&T is one of the largest
communications companies in the world.

At the same time, Excite filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of
the United States Bankruptcy Code. This action allows Excite to remain in
control of its business and provides it with protection from creditors
pending completion of the sale.

Please be assured that our commitment to you remains to provide you with
the best high speed Internet service.

We will continue to update you on a regular basis so that you remain
informed.

Alek Krstajic
Senior Vice President and General Manager
Rogers @Home

The President's Analyst

[ajs]

It's kind of scary that The President's Analyst is going to become timely again (BTW: If you haven't seen this movie, you should, it's got a very sneaky wit).

AT&T is thinking about selling it's broadband access to AOL, and this deal is likely just intended to sweeten the pot. Imagine, AOL as the one true broadband provider/movie studio/tv news outlet/browser company/music label? Yep, time to start a dialup ISP in MY area ;-)

I have a feeling that...

[frleong]

AT&T, the company that U.S. government broke into pieces due to antitrust, is gaining back gradually its monopoly position. Looking at the telecom market in the U.S., the breakup was not particularly effective and comparing to the mobile cellular phone technology of NTT's DoCoMo or of Europe, the U.S. technology in this area sucks.

The Internet phenomenon that was led by the U.S. was due to the invention of HTTP and web browser and the router and backbone explosion was simply a knee-jerk reaction to the growth of WWW -proving that the telecom market has not been very healthly.

This brings us the question: what is the best remedy for MS if breakup might not be successful?

Cringely Right Again

[General_Corto]

You people may like to look at Bob's article from August 30 which quite neatly explains where Excite@Home finds itself.

Remind me to buy stock in Cringely if he ever IPOs.

Fate of @Home

[psicE]

Actually, that does mean that Excite@Home dropped off the face of the earth, at least as a company, because they already agreed to sell all their assets; I think the only reason they filed Chapter 11 instead of 7 is so people wouldn't lose service while the assets were being transitioned. More interesting, though, is what will happen to the assets. Obviously @Home's network will be merged with AT&T Broadband, but what will happen to Excite? AT&T has three real options:

• Sell it off. Yahoo!, MSN or AOL could buy Excite to gain customers, Viacom or Disney could buy it to gain a (better) web presence, but chances are no one would pay enough to make it worth the effort for AT&T.
• Turn it into an AT&T Broadband-only network. Essentially, AT&T could take the current http://home.excite.com/ page, turn that into http://www.attathome.com/, merge the user databases, and ditch the rest of Excite (so you'd have to be a paying customer to use it). This is probably more likely, but if AT&T's planning on selling off Broadband anyway, it may only take time away from negotiations with another cable company.
• Don't do anything yet. AT&T would pretty much make an Excite@Home group inside AT&T Broadband, and not merge the services at all, instead spending effort on negotiations with Comcast. Then, once Comcast and AT&T Broadband merge, it's Comcast's problem.

I think that AT&T will try for about a month to sell Excite, and if they're unsuccessful, they'll just wait until the merger.

And Verizon's monopolistic practices reign.

[RasputinAXP]

After all, my DSL is still going strong.

But I had been planning to switch to Comcast @Home if/when my office begins paying for my connection because supposedly we'll be getting the 2Mbit business connection. At this rate, Comcast will own everything cable-based with the exception of Time-Warner and Cablevision (and other West-coast based cable companies I may not know about).

Guess I might just ask to have my ADSL kicked up to business SDSL...

Transition experience? Bad QOS?

[AtariDatacenter]

Having been inside a few companies (and healthy ones, at that) while a transition has taken place (merger, buyout), I'm a little scared to be an @Home customer right now.

One of the first things to go is the quality of service to the customer. Technical foul-ups as things are transitioned, either technically, or between different groups of people.

I have to say that @Home really didn't add much to my Internet experience that, say, Roadrunner, or Media One would have provided. (The Excite merger really didn't see any major benefits for @Home customers.)

While I'm not worried that I'll be completely shut off, I am worried about the quality of service going forward. It is a legitimate concern. But I don't (yet) have enough motiviation to switch to some other form (DSL, etc) of high speed communications.

Here's hoping that @Home/ATT/Whoever doesn't drop the ball.

Even if AOL does the buying, it may not be awful.

[jcostom]

So many people are up in arms about the possibility of all of this resulting in AOL@Home. I, for one, don't think it's such a terrible thing. AOL-TW has lots of cash, and is a reasonably stable company.

All AOL application/users jokes aside (and believe me, I find the current AOL consumer offer loathesome!), it may not be so bad. AOL has some incredibly smart people running a pretty impressive network. A financially stable company running a solid network? Sounds pretty good to me, even if it is Steve Case running the show. As long as I don't have to use that AWFUL AOL client, and change the way I use my Internet connection, I'll probably not mind.

Hey - look at it this way - the tech support personnel can't get any worse! Ever talk to an @home tech that's less than 3rd level? Wouldn't know a subnet mask from ldap server.