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Most @Home Customers Still Connected -- For Now

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the unless-you're-with-at&t dept.

Mansing writes: "There may be hope after all, according to this update from the Washington Post" In short, a reprieve for many @Home customers, with negotiations ongoing between @Home and the major cable companies with which its service is offered -- watch for updates here. (AT&T broadband customers, though, will be moving to another service -- AT&T dropped out of the negotiations to keep @Home for their customers, and say that switching current customers to a new network will take about 2 weeks.)

4 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. AT&T Are Lying Sacks of Shit by rossz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    On Friday, after the judge ruled, I called AT&T Broadband and asked if my service would be affected. I was told no. Sometime early Saturday morning service stopped (I was asleep at the time).

    I'm switching to DSL (already ordered). It will take about the same amount of time to get it as AT&T says it will take to get my service back. I'm cancelling my AT&T service for the simple reason that they lied to me. Had they simply said, "there might be a problem," I would not be so pissed.

    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
  2. Re:AT&T's replacement is worse than bad. by dw5000 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    1 has already been addressed so we go to:
    2) My IP address that has been static since I signed up over a year ago has suddenly changed and it appears that static addressing in any form has gone up in smoke. This screws anyone relying on a static IP.

    @Home used dynamic IPs, but the thing was that they never really were dynamic. In two years my IP never changed. Now, I'm not sure what's up. It looks like AT&T is, in effect, now treating broadband like the "entertainment service" it always claimed it was whenever you bitched to their support people -- truly dynamic IPs to make it tougher to run a full-time server, 1.5M cap to limit file sharing. Maybe they also got a clue and will be policing their users better and flush out some of the script kiddies.
    If you want static IP, then get DSL.

    3) They have been playing fast and loose with the service agreement (that I signed), but instituting an AUP (that I didn't sign)that directly contradicts it.

    They changed the AUP a few months ago; you should have gotten a notice of it. You had a chance to opt out (although it required either a letter to corporate or cancelling). Heck, you're on a new system; demand them to send you the new AUP. Start getting pro-active here.

    4) Their DNS service has been very erratic

    The network's been up since Saturday morning! Considering that they only had about 60 days to deploy the new provider to 860,000 computers, some DNS goofiness isn't out of the question. This is like expecting someone's last-second hacked together code is not going to have bugs. Get real.

    I'm still reserving judgement. I was very dissatisfied with @Home's service, but since I live in a DSL-less area, I had only one choice for broadband (in '99). Satellite waits in the wings, but I'll let attbi settle out before I make my choice. I was back up and running in about 30 hours -- still shorter than two outages under the previous regime.

    Two lessons to take away:
    1. This wouldn't have been near as bad if broadband providers had been forced to open their systems to multiple ISPs. AT&T paid dearly for being married to @Home.
    2. We need to get the Internet stable enough that we can start getting people to treat it like a true "utility" rather than an "entertainment service." Right now, things are still way too wide open. Consumer protection and basic regulation would have prevented this weekend's fiasco from happening. We need to treat the backbone like a communications network, the ISPs like utilities. I'm OK with free and open so long as we have rules (give 30 days notice to system shutdown, provide e-mail forwarding, in a case where you are a true monopoly you can't shut down unless you find a new provider).
    I think it's also time for the companies to wake up and realize that unless the government steps in and writes a big honking check for a network upgrade, half this country will be on dialup for 10-15 more years. And I don't see Dubya (or anyone else for that matter) opening up his checkbook. Broadband isn't dead, but it will need to look long and hard at how it chooses to move forward.
  3. @home.com Email... by Ironix · · Score: 2, Interesting


    I remember some people were wondering how @Home could fail when they took in so much $$ from their customers...

    Well... Here's a hint. I closed my @Home account 1 year ago. I had 3 email addresses on that account.

    Guess what! I still use ALL 3 of those email addresses, and they all still work beautifully.

    Considering the amount of SPAM I get, and how much bandwidth costs, no wonder they are going out of business.

    --
    Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
  4. attbi transition by Daspek · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i was apparently the 68 or 69th person in the nation to make the transition to the attbi network from excite's (i'm in oregon). aside from the obvious question why we were the first to make the transition, i'm quite miffed at att's tech support. i understand that they were most likely busy, but no one with whom i spoke knew a damn thing about what was going on.

    overall, i'm neutral about the switch. i do like my new, lower ip, but i fear that it isn't going to be quite as static as my old one. either way, attbi looks "cleaner" than @home, imo.