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Excite Could Go Dark On Friday
robvasquez writes: "According to this CNET article, excite @home could be pulling the plug on cable modem subscribers. What's your providers back up plan? Could milions of trolls and Nimda spreaders be taken off line?"
Cox@home is staying up, they're just going to be dropping the "@home" part.
Some of us slashdot readers are going to be caught in that too you know.
It's not all "trolls and Nimda spreaders" who happen to be on @home, and could be screwed.
blah.
I got an email from AT&T yesterday:
Dear *************,
As you may be aware, Excite@Home, our service provider, recently filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. In order to continue providing you the quality and reliable high-speed cable Internet service that you expect, AT&T has submitted a proposal to purchase the Excite@Home network. If AT&T is able to purchase and manage the Excite@Home network, there will be no immediate change to your current service. If the network purchase is approved, we will notify you via your AT&T@Home email account as soon as possible.
As a precautionary measure, AT&T Broadband also has been building its own network and service in the event that AT&T is unable to purchase the Excite@Home network. If the proposal to purchase the Excite@Home network is not approved, your service may be temporarily interrupted and it will be necessary to move your service to a new AT&T Broadband network.
In any event, AT&T Broadband is deeply committed to providing you the best cable Internet service possible and communicating any upcoming changes. Be sure to frequently check the "Announcements and Updates" section of our Web site for the latest information about your service: http://help.broadband.att.com/
In the meantime, please check your AT&T Broadband email account(s) on a daily basis. Doing this will automatically save your email to your hard drive as well as ensure timely receipt of important future communications from AT&T Broadband. Also, if you use our Personal WebSpace feature, we recommend you backup your personal web page(s) by copying it to a diskette, CD, or to your computer hard drive.
If migrating your service to the AT&T Broadband network and service becomes necessary, we will call to notify you of the migration timing. A message will be left on your voicemail or recorder if no one is available at the time of the call. As a precaution, we are providing you the following instructions, which will enable you to connect your computer to the new AT&T Broadband network. Again, you will only need to follow these steps in the event you receive a call from AT&T Broadband instructing you to do so.
1. Restart your computer to begin the process.
2. Open your Internet browser. You should be automatically sent to an AT&T Broadband welcome page. This page includes instructions on how to download software used to change your computer settings for the new network. If the welcome page does not automatically appear when you open your browser, please go to http://newuser.attbi.com/ (This website will only be available if the service migration is necessary).
3. Follow the instructions on the Web site to run the Automated Configuration Utility (or you can choose to change your computer settings manually).
4. The software will automatically change your Outlook Express email client, your Internet Explorer settings, and configure your computer for the new AT&T Broadband network. Information on how to manually change your settings for other email clients and Internet browsers such as Netscape Communicator and Netscape Navigator can be found at http://help.broadband.att.com/
5. You can now surf the Internet and use email on the new AT&T Broadband Internet network and service.
If migrating your service to the new network is necessary, certain aspects of your service would change. Your current homepage would feature new content and your current email address domain name would change. Please note that your username would remain the same. For example, jsmith@home.com would change to jsmith@attbi.com. If service changes are necessary, a detailed description of all changes will be provided at http://help.broadband.att.com/ in the Announcements and Updates section.
Whether the Excite@Home network is purchased or your service is migrated to the new AT&T Broadband network, your Subscriber Agreement, which outlines the general Terms and Conditions of your service will change. You will be able to view the amended and restated Subscriber Agreement that will apply to the AT&T Broadband Internet service at http://help.broadband.att.com/ Your continued use of the service will constitute your acceptance of the amended and restated AT&T Broadband Internet Subscriber Agreement.
If you need assistance, visit us online at http://help.broadband.att.com/ to chat with a customer care specialist. Please remember, AT&T Broadband will call you if any action is required on your part.
While we realize these potential changes may cause some inconvenience, please be assured that we are doing everything possible to avoid any service disruptions. However, in the event the service is disrupted during a migration, you will receive a credit for those days of interrupted service.
We are working hard to provide you with the best high-speed cable Internet service possible. We appreciate your patience and your business.
Sincerely,
Susan K. Marshall
Senior Vice President
Advanced Broadband Services
the difference between Chapter 11 bankruptcy (where the court holds off the creditors while you submit a plan and work towards paying everything off and becoming profitable) and "going dark"???
No wonder so many dot.coms went tits-up
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I'm hearing rumors that @Home is delibrately causing issues with customer account conversions at various cable offices. My fiance is a CSR, and she's been talking about how @Home's sytems are no longer removing modem records from the headends, and the regional General Manager is contantly on the phone bitching at them to fix it (and fast). Apparently every time they try to convert a customer, they issue the account close operation, and it returns successfully, but the customer's modem stays online. When they add the local record for the subscriber, their UBR is given the appropriate information and will accept the modems, but the customer has a 50/50 chance of the @Home UBR responding before theirs. Effectively keeping most customers on @Home's network.
You'd think that they were just having issues with their UBR, or maybe with their access to @Home's subscriber management system, but they are able to successfully add new customers to their own service just fine, and everything was going smoothly with conversions until just a week ago.
Could be @Home being a prick until the very last minute, could be a coincedence. I'm not apt to support one theory or the other, I'm just relaying what I hear.
Moderation: -1 Heresay! (lmao)
I use Yahoo and find their junk-mail folder to be far superior to Hotmail's (I use both actually). Also, Yahoo provides you with 6 MB of email messages in your online mailbox, while Hotmail only allows 2 or 3. I admit that's still not much, but if you save that much email, why is it still online? As for reliability, I've never seen Yahoo to be down ever. Maybe that one time from the DDoS attack, but I didn't check my email that day.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
We've been barraged for a couple months on Shaw @Home to set up new shaw.ca addresses.
This coming from someone with a geocities webpage.
Kettle, meet Pot.
BilldaCat
Please read this thread on DSL Reports. It includes important information, schedule, etc. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 22:52:21 -0800
To: Chip Rosenthal <chip@unicom.com>
Subject: Fwd: Newsletter Provided by The Black World Today [Evaluation - see full header]
From: AUP Enforcement Team <abuse@home.net>
Reply-To: AUP Enforcement Team <abuse@home.net>
Dear Chip Rosenthal,
Your message, including your pasted-in email message body, firewall log,
or newsgroup header, exceeded the maximum message size allowed by our
mail service. Please reduce the size of your email message and exclude
any excessive message body or MIME/UNICODE text.
For firewall users, usually one line detailing a system probe attempt
from an @Home user is sufficient for us to take action on the event.
Multiple lines detailing more than one event from the same user are not
necessary.
Thank you,
The @Home Network Policy Management Team
The message they refused was a whopping 50K.
Oh, and of course they fail to return the original report so that you can revise and resubmit it. That's a favorite trick of spam-friendly ISPs.
Pity @Home flushed all that money on the Excite portal. Otherwise, maybe they could afford another disk shelf for their mail server.
Could milions of trolls and Nimda spreaders be taken off line?
:)
What, AOL are being closed down too?
but it is pissing awfully a lot of people
It sure is!
Frankly, I'm very disappointed with what Rogers is doing to its subscribers. I've been a customer for over two years, and I haven't left despite the frequent occurrences of down-time (initially, at least). It's gotten better since... Until now.
The single most horrible change that was implemented was the requirement for the 'From' field to be set to an @rogers.com address. That is completely unacceptable for many people, like me. I use a forwarding address for specifically this reason: I don't ever want to go through the hassle of informing people of an address change. I refuse to change the 'From' field, and rightly so. Problem is, I can't send email outside of the @rogers.com domain. Oh joy.
Another great disappointment is the loss of static IP. When I signed up, I was promised a static IP address. A year and a half later (not bad!) the service changed to dynamic, with the option of static (eg. gather settings, set the router, go on with life). Once the transition is complete, static addressing won't even be possible, much to my dismay. I don't care that I need it or not, it's a matter of a promise being a promise.
But there's more! The inbound email servers changed their user name requirements to "userid"@rogers.com (from "userid" plain and simple). This is a pain to get working under Netscape 4.x. For those of you who have yet to make the transition, please go see this Netscape article for information on how to make the change work. I didn't have time to look that up beforehand, so I got my family to make the transition to Netscape 6.2.
The list goes on... Tens of thousands of the 500 000 Rogers@home subscribers use Netscape. It was supported for a long time. Slowly, however, support for Netscape was dropped. Now the techies, whether they want to or not, are not allowed to assist with Netscape matters (save for giving out server info... I'll get to that).
When it comes to server info, Rogers did not, sadly, tell the techies or even their supervisors what the "real" servers are. Instead, they insist everyone use 'pop' and 'smtp', which is find and dandy if you don't have a router, but useless if you do. It took a lot of searching through newsgroups to find what the real servers are. I don't blame the techies for this; I blame Rogers.
I have much to gripe about over this transition and the service in general, but I think this is enough ;-) It's a shame customers are being neglected and lied to as much as they are. If Rogers weren't the monopoly around here, I'd consider (NOT necessarily follow through on) switching to another service. Sympatico, though, is not an option (for me. I dislike PPPoE).
Thanks for hearing me through. Cheers!
The ensuing clamor might be enough to motivate the gubment to monopolize Internet provision and bring it to everyone for a reasonable fee.
This is wrong on so many levels it's difficult to even begin. First of all, the government is the last entity I think of when I consider responsive, efficient organizations. I don't know about you, but I like both of those qualities in my internet connection.
This is ignoring the fact that Carnivore would go by the wayside. Who needs Carnivore when you just own the whole thing?
We see what happens in other countries when the government runs the internet. Why, just this week, we've had 17k internet cafes shut down in China and Saudi Arabia looking to build an even bigger firewall.
You thought that the interstate highway system was yours because of gasoline taxes? In times of war the DOT has the authority to take over whatever roads the military needs to move troops/supplies. I don't know about you, but I don't relish the idea of getting kicked off the net for any reason, let alone some religious nutjob.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I have been on comcast @home for a year and a half now. Completely addicted to my connection... Has ANYONE heard what comcast may be doing about this? I know that @home is just the portal/email/webspace/proxy... surely they wouldnt just drop the customers b/c of that would they?
Anyone? (Do not mod up please)
Geez - I guess that's one way to keep people from using NAT behind their cable modem.
Someone moderate +1 troll to the poster of the article!
I had customers calling into today saying they couldnt reach excite mobile mail on the phones. After some checking, mobile.excite.com says they discontinued thier service. They didnt even let me know so I could remove the connection.
Step 2: Merge with MediaOne and control 30% of cable.
Step 3: Get the FCC to withdraw the cable ownership caps set during MediaOne merger
Step 4: Buy out the number one broadband company, despite protests from stockholders that AT&T (being the majority stockholder) had set itself up to pay very little for Excite@Home.
Yeah, water's a lot harder to manage, and the stakes are higher when it fails. When's the last time people died because their internet connection wasn't properly maintained?
Internet would be a breeze compared to water and power.
I talked to a few people at Comcast back when Excite was having trouble earlier this year, and they hinted at the fact that there wouldn't be a problem if Excite went under.
Later, when I called to complain about the newly-imposed bandwidth caps, they hinted at the fact that they would be offering different service plans in the near future, and mentioned Excite's financial troubles numerous times.
Also, if you notice they have had their own portal (www.icomcast.net) up and running for some time now.
Lastly, they just upped their cable modem service rates--from what I'm told by people at Comcast again, its to cover new operating expenses (read: no more Excite).
So, with any luck, Comcast users shouldn't experience many, if any, problems with service. All signs are pointing to them keeping service afloat.
I will grudgingly agree with you that some regulation may be required for equitable access. There are some critical differences though. First, broadband access to the home, beyond ISDN, has only been available for less than five years now. I haven't dug up the answer, but I have to believe that telegraphs and telephones were around a lot longer before they acheived the penetration that home broadband has in its short lifetime.
I agree with you that the market is still too immature to see whether or not intervention would help or hinder it.
Living in a rural area comes with its drawbacks, however. You're off the sewer line, off the gas line, deal with flaky phone lines, etc. Simply because you're out of reach of the CO and your cable company doesn't offer cable modem does NOT mean that you're without broadband. Dedicated circuits have a longer signalling lenght, repeaters can be put on a DSL line, and there's always satellite internet. Not ideal, but you live in the styx, you make some sacrifices re: the societal umbilicus.
About the unserved businesses, businesses don't run on cable modems or DSL. They run either colo or dedicated lines. One thing you started in on, but didn't explore, is that it's going to take universal access before the net becomes the medium everyone (or at least, the commercial everyone) wants it to become. One day, the Sears catalog will be no more. That day will only come when there truly is universal broadband access.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
It's not that the loss of Excite isn't causing any confusion, but for both Rogers@Home and Cogeco@Home, customers have been contacted weeks ago about the change (snail mail, television commercials, e-mails, and even phone calls). Rogers and Cogeco will simply be changing over to @rogers.com and @cogeco.com respectively, and, as long as no one has their system set up as a static IP (which it shouldn't), the user only needs to change their e-mail program of the change (and maybe reupload their website to the new domain).
The sad part is, Excite is definitely being a big dink about all of this. I had several usernames from Cogeco, and then
I moved to a Rogers-controlled area. Everything was fine until now - unfortunately, since Rogers wasn't the original creator of the usernames, they can't transfer it to @rogers.com - and since Cogeco can't get Excite to transfer them to Rogers, I'm rather stuck. Fine, I can just get Rogers to create some accounts for me when everything's settled, but Excite could have simply deleted the accounts and then Rogers could have had free access to them - but no, they froze the accounts, not allowing anyone to touch it. Ugh. Ah well, things will be MUCH better now that Excite is over with... at least from my end of things.
(Gratuitous slams at Microsoft don't constitute an argument. Besides, ESR would be surprised to find that MS owns fetchmail. :-) )
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Access to the internet is a privelege, not a right
It's neither. It's a product you buy and pay for, and is subject to whatever contract that was agreed upon at the time of purchase, and the UCC laws regarding contracts.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.