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@Home Network Approaching Shutdown

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-code-red dept.

David Harris writes: "A bankruptcy court ruled today that the @Home network will be shutdown at midnight, unless the company reaches new deals with its cable partners and creditors. The decision is a victory for bondholders, owed $750 million by Excite@Home, whose motion asked the court to shutdown the network on grounds that AT&T's $307 million offer to acquire @Home's broadband network is not adequate and fair value for the network could only be found if a shutdown was forced." Read about it on excite.com, while you can. CNet has a good analysis of where things stand. 45% of the cable modem users in North America! Ouch.

6 of 797 comments (clear)

  1. As seen on Excite by Alien54 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Assuming that they will go off the air at mignight, here is the official announcement from Excite:
    ExciteAtHome Cleared to Disconnect
    Updated: Fri, Nov 30 3:46 PM EST

    A judge cleared the way for bankrupt ExciteAtHome to turn off its high-speed Internet cable service as early as Friday night, which could affect about 4 million subscribers around the country.

    The cable companies that connect their customers to the high-speed network said they plan to appeal the decision to U.S. District Court in San Francisco as soon as possible.

    Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Carlson said Redwood City-based ExciteAtHome could reject its existing contracts with the cable companies as early as 3 a.m. EST Saturday, when their contracts expire.

    Carlson gave ExciteAtHome the leeway to end the contracts after concluding they had become "clearly burdensome" to the company.

    Under the contracts, ExciteAtHome executives said the company was losing up to $6 million per week.

    A burnrate of 6 million per week is not good.

    Someone grab a screen shot for the dot-bomb museum, please.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  2. This is logical by locust · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I love the logic, the moment @home shuts down it won't be just hemoraging cash. It will be hemoraging users too. Once those users find alternative service, they won't go back to @home unless @home makes them a really sweet deal. That will just make the cost of starting back up even higher.


    Time to starting looking for a new provider.


    --locust

  3. Why don't WE buy it? by Bitmanhome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We have 4 million users .. if each one sent me $100, we'd have more than AT&T's bid. And for $250, we'd have a billion, which not only covers @home's debt, but is likely WAY more than AT&T wants to spend.

    Would you pay $250 for a share of your own cablenet company?

    -B

    --
    Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
  4. Re:Shutting down bad move for both sides? by lizrd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's extortion. AT&T made an offer to buy the network from excite@home and the bond holders didn't think that it was high enough. They think that AT&T or some other entity who has an interest in having the network operational will make a better offer when they are under a more real threat of having the network turned off.

    --
    I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
  5. Service tiers... by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem with the residential broadband market is that it relies on users not using much of the bandwidth available to them. But the people that most flock to broadband connections are those that want bandwidth.

    I'm fighting with Cox Road Runner (Fairfax, VA) about policy changes. Although not currently prohibited, it appears that they are trying to pressure residential users that run their own (passworded) FTP servers, Telnet servers, mail, and web servers into buying Cox Business Internet services. One problem: My 1.5mbps download pipe costs $250 on business vs. $40 on residential. Odd too, how they are only discussing these server limitations now that they have a high-priced "business service" to offer.

    Road Runner, @home, and other cable modem services need to start pricing more realistically. If someone wants just "basic" service for e-mail and web pages, then give them 512K PPPOE so that they can't run servers. And charge them $40 a month for it. If someone wants to run servers for personal use or needs a bit more bandwidth to dowload Linux and *BSD ISO images, give them 1.5MB, 1 static IP and charge them $90. But don't try to make residential users pay for business class services that cost as much as a car payment! People just won't make the jump from $40 to $250 -- unless they really are running businesses.

  6. Re:This really doesn't make sense. by JWhitlock · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I was looking over my 2001 Demotivators calendar (2002 version for sale here). It says that on October 25, 1999, "A zero-revenue online greeting company called "Blue Mountain" sells for $780 million to Excite".

    I did a quick search of the Excite web site. That same month, they promised to donate up to $3 million to a Meg Ryan-sponsered charity.

    They had a revenue of $113 million for that quarter.

    The 1999 news site has a ton of stuff like this. The 2000 site seems to have as much, but the last announcement is in May, 2000.

    Does that shed some light on where the money went? Just another company, thinking they would keep getting exponential growth, making money out of nothing, with no provisions for an economic downturn.

    I'll miss being a LPB on Counterstrike.