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Excite@Home & Comcast/AT&T Reach Agreement
whee writes: "Through a $160 million deal, it looks like Comcast users will have Excite@Home supplied access for at least more three months (press release). Comcast anticipates moving existing customers over to a new Comcast-owned and managed network before the new contract expires." As well, it appears that the folks who were using AT&T's brand of Excite@Home are back online - as this press release said. T: CNET also has a story on the 3-way deal.
Try NOT@HOME!
tcd004
df
I don't particularly care for the way this whole excite@home situation has been dealt with on a public relations front. Personally, I had to email my service provider to get information concerning this, and then they suggest things like "Check our website for updates."
I can't do that if I don't have service..
You would think that in an age where people have become dependent on the internet for just about everything that these companies should be obligated to tell you when they are just going to cut you off, or when they really don't know what's going to happen. It's not like you've violated your end of the deal and they have the right to "discontinue service at any time."
AT+T was NOT part of this deal. AT+T has not made a deal with @Home. Comcast has NOT bought AT+Ts cable buisness (yet). AT+T IS moving customers to their own network infrastructure. AT+T had moved 10% shortly after the plug got pulled. AT+T has NOW moved 40%. They plan to move the rest by Friday. Sheesh.
READING IS FUNDAMENTAL. Try it sometime.
Well, most things are working again here in Sunnyvale, California. However, if you call AT&T's tech support line, they indicate trouble in California and few other states. For me, the trouble appears to be that I can get to some big sites like slashdot, but a lot of obscure sites are not coming up. I wonder if this is a caching problem -- anything really popular is still cached by AT&T, anything not popular is a "black hole" for me.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I am one of the many AT&T@Home customers who got switched off this weekend. I was notified by phone that it would be 7 days before my Internet connection was back up again. I was pleasantly surprised to find it up and running when I got back home from work tonight. I set my ethernet card to DHCP and was off and running as soon as it grabbed an IP.
. We should give AT&T credit for handling this well and for getting us online in half the time they originally promised.
Anyway, I was just reading the other article about @Home, and noticed the many complaints about the new 1.5MBps download cap. All I can say is, Are you serious? After using dialup for two days, I'm glad I have broadband again!
Let's look at the facts:
-- I had Speakeasy DSL at my old place of residence. I got 5 static IPs and a 1.5 down/384 up connection for $100 a month. Now, for half that price, I get the same download speed. I really don't think there is a complaint to be made there.
-- The Speakeasy/Covad/PacBell trio took six weeks to get my DSL installed. I found I had to reset the modem every month or so because it would myseriously give up the ghost. My cable modem was installed at 8AM the day after I called, and running by 8:30 that same morning.
I have only once had to reset my cable modem, excluding this weekend's outage.
--AT&T said that they would take 7 days to get those of us in the Bay Area back up. They took 3. Not bad, considering this was pretty much unexpected on their end.
-- As some of you in the Bay Area know, the @Home gateway out of San Jose was completely overtaxed. My ping on my favorite Quake III server went from 27 to 100 within the past couple of months. Now that I'm on AT&T's new network, my ping is 50 -- quite acceptable.
For those of you whining about the 1.5MBps cap, I say go back to dialup. Better yet, sign on with PacBell DSL. You'll get 608/128 (yes, less than half the speed you get now) for the same price. Plus, you'll get idiots from tech support and billing problems (by the time I cancelled PacHell and moved to cable modem at my current place of residence, they had managed to rack up over $900 of incorrect charges on my account, which took 4 months to resolve.)
Let's not forget that there are still millions of broadband-starved people in this world. I should think that there are better things to complain about than the fact that your $40 a month broadband connection went from sometimes-incredibly-super-fast to still-fast-but-maybe-not-as-fast-as-it-was-before
The line that worries me is regarding "converting" my account to their new scheme. Sounds like a good time for them to raise prices (again) or lower services. Lets hope not.
(attached letter from comcast)
Dear Comcast @Home Customer,
I am pleased to announce that Comcast has reached an agreement with Excite@Home,
pending approval from the Bankruptcy Court, that provides you with uninterrupted
high-speed Internet service. Comcast's first priority is to provide you
with reliable and high-quality service. This agreement also will ensure
a smooth transition from your current service to an improved, all-Comcast
managed Internet service in the weeks ahead.
Comcast High-Speed Internet will provide you with the high-speed, always-on
connection you've come to enjoy. This new Comcast service also will offer
improved reliability, customer support and features, such as "e-mail from
anywhere" with web-based e-mail and an innovative storage solution for
MP3s and photos.
We will provide you with notification and instructions on how to convert
your account to Comcast High-Speed Internet before we introduce service
in your area. In addition, Comcast will continue to provide you with regular
updates on our toll-free hotline at 1-888-433-6963 and on our website at
http://www.comcastonline.com/info.htm.
Having this agreement in place is an important piece to ensuring a smooth
transition to Comcast High-Speed Internet. We appreciate your loyalty
as a customer and apologize for any inconvenience you have been caused
in the last week. We will continue to aggressively strive to provide you
the best high-speed Internet service and support possible. Thank you for
choosing Comcast.
Sincerely,
David Juliano
Senior Vice President, Comcast Online Communications
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I'm in the same boat as you - formerly ATT@home, now attbi.com. My service did not work when I plugged in the broadband router I had been using for the past six months, but it worked just fine when I removed the router. I figured that maybe AT&T was filtering known router MAC addresses on their new network (as some ISPs have been known to do), but then I changed the MAC address on the router and it still didn't work. Then I tried it on my buddy's DSL connection and it worked perfectly.
Something suspicious is definitely going on here. I think AT&T found a new way of blocking routers on their new network. Has anyone else figured out how they are doing this and how to fix it?
-sting3r
1) The $320 million Comcast and Cox (NOT AT&T) are paying @Home will be the last revenue @Home will ever see. Both Comcast and Cox are planning to have their users migrated to their own networks well in advance of the expiration of the 90-day contract term.
2) By flipping the bird to AT&T, @Home lost whatever bargaining leverage it had with them. AT&T said they could have their network up and running in short order, and they appear well on track to do so. I'm one of the disconnected AT&T@Home users, and here in San Mateo CA, we were down for a total of 48 hours. I was back up this morning with full connectivity. (And to all you people whinging about the AWFUL 1.5Mbps download cap, please inform me where you can get T-1 speed for under $50/month and I'll gladly sign up. Didn't think so.)
3) Item 2 above led directly to today's all-hands at @Home where CEO Patti Hart announced that @Home is history after the Comcast and Cox contracts finish on March 1, 2002. AT&T has pulled their bid for the company, and barring a rescue at the 11th hour, @Home will convert their Chapter 11 filing to Chapter 7 in March.
Add them all up, and that's one dead company. Maybe AT&T did put them in this position, but speaking for the subscribers, we really don't care whose fault it was.
I'm noticing >500ms ping times to a local router beyond my cable box - a symptom that I've seen happen before they disable modems. Upon calling Adelphia (Carlsbad, San Diego, CA), they said that they're sutting off today.
It should be coming back online on/around Dec 16th as a new local service.
- ez
(Just FYI)
Maybe Slash could buy it. Or better yet sell it to MS, and help bleed the beast of Remond as they desperately try to show how to run things right.
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
As well, it appears that the folks who were using AT&T's brand of Excite@Home are back online
Yeah, back online through NETZERO! Do you have any idea how slow netzero is? I read that, got all excited, turned my modem back on, and then discovered that it still won't sync. Thanks for nothing! hehe
As I've said before, the fastest pipe does no good if it's only getting water from a trickling spring.
Their caching techniques will remain, @Home has made its contribution to the infrastructure knowledge base of this I-net thing, and we all move on.
If there is a market, someone will step in to fill it. If it is cheaper for Comcast, ATT, Cox Cablevision and Big Bob's Bait, Tackle & Routing to buy some level of service from an "@Home" style of super ISP, then such a thing will happen again.
@Home's failure doesn't get me down. I worked with many of those same people at different times, the people and their skills remain alive and well and ready to move on to the next project.
How's Juniper stock doing, anyway?
Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Well, first of all, it sucks that AT&T forced the @home bankrupcy. But had @home's finances been in order, it wouldn't have happened. They made some bad decisions, drained their cash reserves, incured debt, and put themselves in a vulnerable position. AT&T just smelled an easy buy, and went for it. Everybody loves Capitalism, and this is its finest hour.
The sad part is that @home is pretty much dead. I was a customer of Rogers@home. Now it's just Rogers (for those who do not know, Rogers is the cable monopoly in Toronto, Canada). They made the transition, and while it was pretty messy, it's done. And you can be sure they're not moving back to @home. They took 400 000 subscribers away from the 4mil that @home had. Same for Shaw@home (which is another Canadian cable company). That's another 2-300 000 subscribers.
Not to mention AT&T, with God knows how many customers. Actually, God might know, or even google.com, but it's too late at night for me to check the actual numbers.
And those are not by far the only companies that decided to leave @home. So now Excite@home is left with less than half of its former users, maybe even less. But it has the same debt, and an even worse situation. Just the fact that they came close to shutting down and it killed their former image. If it would have been hard for it to survive before the bankrupcy, now that's pretty much impossible. So the bond holders that opposed the AT&T buyout are just as screwed, if not worse.
I'm just your J.R. Random letting you know how my switch from AT&T @home to ATTbi went. At around 3:30 am on Sunday my @home connection died, I know this because that is when my last minute ftp of MDK 8.1 CD 1 died. I woke up, and every site my browser pointed to was an instruction site letting me know my new configuration info, so I changed my router's information, shut off the router and my cable modem for a few seconds, and then reapplied power. Presto, 30 seconds later I was back online. No problems with any of the computers behind my router.
A few things I noticed right off the bat was that my previous @home connection gave my computer a dns entry that was static, and -could- be used to host a site, it followed the convention of hostname.city.state.home.com. But now my computer's "url" doesn't seem to make any sense, and rather than being associated with my current IP address, it links me to some control panel of sorts, however the last I checked it wasn't really complete offering a few tools, but no UI.
Secondly, I read up on AT&T's website, noting that my parents' user@home.com e-mail account would now be user@attbi.com, which is not nearly as easy to remember, or to give out, and that all mail sent to @home would not be redirected, but rather rejected. Unfortunately, any mail sent to their old account returns the following:
This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:
HEIALMBOS.MHRIH
Isn't that helpful? I was hoping it would at least advise the sender to change the hostname of the e-mail address. Secondly, AT&T@home previously placed a 650 KB/s downstream, and 128 KB/s upstream cap on our connection. However now on attbi we have 1.5 Mb down (which after running a speedtest I found to hover around 1.1 and 1.2 Mb/s) and again 128 KB/s upstream. This is a nice change for us, although I am aware other users didn't have such a cap.
Also, @home previously offered webspace with each account, which was 10 Mb. Now it seems they have modified their service to include 60 Mb of webspace, I never used this feature before, but have activated it now in anticipation of a backup site for my regular page. As of yet their "df" command in the web-based control panel still says I have 10240 Kb free, but I'm assuming that's either a limitation of the webpanel, or they haven't upgraded the servers yet.
Additionally, their user management page is -completely- redesigned, making itself much more intuitive, and helpful, not to mention easy to use. I attempted to get an e-mail address with our @home service, but it had been taken by someone else previously, and then deleted, rendering it unusable because AT&T won't reactivate e-mail accounts after they have been deleted. However, with the switch, all the "dead" e-mail addresses are now available, and I was able to successfully activate my preferred address. On the same note, we were previously allowed 7 total fixed addresses, but now we are only allowed 5 simultaneous addresses, I say this is a good thing though, because before when you deleted an address, you didn't get credit back to create any more, but now you can "rename" a user account, so I renamed my old one, to the desired username without changing the number of e-mail's we're using. The @home service limited the password length on accounts to a maximum of 9 characters, and a minimum of 6, this was -very- limiting. The new attbi service allows the standard 8-16 character password, which is very handy.
Overall I am pleased with our change in service, and although other people have experienced DNS, and login errors, I had zero issues with the change-over, and can only hope, in my case at least, it is a permanent change. My loss of a domain is hardly earth-shattering, and as far as I know, once attbi gets stabilized, their IP's will again become semi-static like it was before. I can't speak for others, I know some people in California who once used @home and are now on juno. My transition was smooth, and my service has gone from pretty good to even better. But as they say, YMMV.
Score 1: Repetitive Information Fodder
The minus is we lost our static IP address, which means we can't let it leak through the firewall to VPN into work anymore -- now we're back to physically bypassing the firewall to work from home.
The plus -- and it's a big one -- is the new Subscriber's Agreement. Under @Home we were not allowed to run a "server" -- any server. They did not allow http or ftp or anything else. ATTBI say:
In other words, if you run an FTP server and someone downloads your files, it's your problem not theirs. In other words, they don't care! They also say:But that also means you can use dynamic DNS to associate a host hame to your dynamic IP for non-commercial purposes. Way cool -- I like that a lot!But I'm bummed at losing the static IP. And myname@Home sounded better than myname@ATTBI. I just hope that I'm not forced to switch to AOL or MSN next month.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Um, well, first... that press release doesn't say that everyone is back on-line... in fact, it's a release from Saturday. Here, it's Tuesday. Can Hemos read??
Second, since I am an ATT Broadband customer in Chicago, sitting here dialed in using a 56k modem, I can assure you that ATT customers are *not* all back on-line. Contrary to the attitude in SF, the bay area does not constitute the entire world...
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun, with Coca-cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.
Since a lot of you are having DNS problems, it might be a good time to switch to OpenNIC DNS servers. I did a week ago and it is very cool. You'll be able to resolve legacy DNS zones, such as .com, .net, and .org, but you'll get the cool, open zones as well.
.geek domain! Don't worry if you can't go to the .geek NIC yet, you'll have to set up the open DNS servers for your machine or network.
There is a list of public servers, but please use the tier 2 DNS servers. Find the lowest latency servers and follow the directions if you don't know how to set up DNS.
Then, if you get into it, get a
P.S.
My AT&T@Home came back up two days ago (Seattle).
Cox Press Release
r up tion.asp
http://www.cox.com/pressroom/No%20Service%20Dis
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2001
COX COMMUNICATIONS ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT TO AVOID DISRUPTION OF COX@HOME INTERNET SERVICE
Pact Ensures Residential Cox@Home Customers and Business Customers Continue To Receive High-Speed Internet Access During Transition To New Cox-Managed Network
ATLANTA - Cox Communications, Inc. (NYSE: COX) today announced that it has reached an agreement that will allow the company's 555,000 Cox@Home customers and more than 20,000 commercial business customers to maintain Internet access through their broadband connections until the company transitions to its own high-speed network. The agreement is pending approval by Bankruptcy Court Judge Thomas E. Carlson.
Through the agreement involving Excite@Home, its creditors, and other cable companies, Excite@Home will continue to serve as Cox's supplier of high-speed Internet service while Cox rolls out its own managed network over the next few months. Under the terms of the agreement, Cox will pay $160 million to Excite@Home for three months of uninterrupted service for its Cox@Home subscribers. This amount will be in lieu of the monthly subscriber fees previously paid to Excite@Home.
Excite@Home filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September and subsequently was faced with a court ruling that threatened to disrupt high-speed Internet service for approximately 4 million residential cable customers, including those served by Cox. Some customers of Cox's commercial division, Cox Business Services, would also have been impacted. On November 30, a bankruptcy court judge approved a petition filed by Excite@Home giving it the right to terminate its service agreements and cease providing service to its cable affiliates and their customers. However, following Friday's ruling, Cox was successful in negotiating a new temporary agreement with Excite@Home so that service will continue for a brief period of time until Cox's new network is fully deployed and its Internet customers have been transitioned to a new Cox-managed service.
"We are pleased that all parties in this case reached an agreement based on the best interests of our customers," said Dallas Clement, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Development. "This agreement allows an orderly transition of Cox@Home customers to our own high-speed network without the fear of major service disruptions."
The agreement doesn't change Cox Communications' plans to transition its customers to the company's own nationwide high-speed Internet network. That transition will begin in December and will be completed, on a market-by-market basis, by March 2002.
"This agreement means we have been given time to transition our customers in an orderly fashion, without any prolonged service outages or e-mail disruptions," said Pat Esser, Executive Vice President of Operations. "Establishing our own network will give us more control over the quality and reliability of service, the ability to add new features, and allow us to be more responsive. Our new system will be based on the most advanced technology and will be supported by Cox technicians and service representatives who will monitor all aspects of the service and quickly resolve any technical issues. Ultimately, our own network will allow us to provide an improved customer experience, which will increase customer loyalty and attract new customers." Cox Communications currently offers high-speed Internet access through Excite@Home in 18 markets. In addition, Cox provides high-speed Internet access to an additional 230,000 customers under the brands RoadRunner and Cox Express. These customers also will transition to Cox High Speed Internetsm service later next year. Cox Business Services Internet customers will simultaneously transition to the Cox-managed data network.
About Cox Communications:
Cox Communications, a Fortune 500 company, serves approximately 6.2 million customers nationwide, making it the nation's fifth largest cable television company. A full-service provider of telecommunications products, Cox offers an array of services, including Cox Cable; local and long distance telephone services under the Cox Digital Telephone brand; high-speed Internet access under the brands Cox@Home, RoadRunner and Cox Express; advanced digital video programming services under the Cox Digital Cable brand; and commercial voice and data services via Cox Business Services. Cox is an investor in telecommunications companies including Sprint PCS and Excite@Home, as well as programming networks including Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel. More information about Cox Communications can be accessed on the Internet at www.cox.com.
About Cox Business Services
Cox Business Services is the commercial broadband division of Atlanta-based Cox Communications, Inc. A full-service, facilities-based provider of telecommunications solutions, Cox Business Services serves home offices; small, medium and large-sized businesses; school districts; and hospitality, government and military properties in cities across the nation. Cox offers high-speed Internet services; switched voice services and long-distance; wholesale carrier access; and dedicated voice, data and video transport services. More information about Cox can be accessed on the Internet at www.coxbusiness.com.
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
These guys paid $785M for BlueMountain.com. I kid you not,
Are you serious?
Oh my god.
I could have made a shitty web site just like that for much less
I guess instead I should be charging MORE for crappier products.
sigh....
ipv6 is my vpn
Agreed, slashdot really needs to actually get some editors that know what facts are and fabricated information is.
...
example
We reacted quickly. Customers had been notified earlier that this might occur. In Michigan an auto-dialer started calling customers at 9:00 AM Saturday and an e-mail was sent to Minnesota customers. 700 additional call-center resources were brought on-line around the country to help answer customer inquiries. Calls were 300% over normal loads and customers overflowed into the Minnesota call-center and inbound sales. Although many calls were received, call center personnel reported that most were courteous and simply in search of additional information.
AT&T told excite to stuff it and their extra crappy service. AT&T is lighting up a broadband solution that has been engineered basically overnight by the best and brightest that cisco and AT&T has.
This is possibly the best thing to ever happen to AT&T, and the fact will shine through over the next few months.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
your complaining about a 111 KB cap? since the move to Charter Pipeline (Charter@Home seems to be totally dead), my download cap has been at 14KB, 128k up and down.
I'd kill for that 111KB connection now.....
It may be unpopular to praise your broadband provider but I'm going to seriously miss @home when I'm finally switched over to Comcast's own network.
With all the talk of download caps as low as 768K on the ATT network, I realize how spoiled I've been. My download speeds are often 2.4Mbits or greater. On a speed test website, I tested 7x faster than my neighbors Verizon DSL service (basic level).
Comcast@home was an excellent deal at $39.95 per month. I'll be sorry to see it go.
Had to deal with the up again down again service from AT&T for quite some time now, best way to cope with it (90% of the problems have been in the WAN/Modem/AT&T's screwed up networking) is to hit that little reset button in back of the modem... This forces the modem to reestablish the link to their WAN and get a fresh IP... In the meanwhile, their DNS appears to have been restored, so no more relying on their DHCP (my roomy can now access webpages/non-IP addresses over Sygate), well, for however long they can keep it up... It's looking like the last time it went down here was due to their installing their DNS routing hard/software or whatever IT guys do... Pity it took them this long to get it done, considering they had as early as second quarter reports to figure out that @home was going tits up... Ohwell...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Last night I was switched from @Home to Adelphia Powerlink. It's working just fine this morning, and a bit faster. I feel sorry for those stuck on @Home for 3 more months.
It was definitely offline as of last night, but today I notice I can trace to my default route (24.2.176.1) from my office (which is connected via UUnet). Not sure yet if this means it's up; know for sure in a few hours.
Now that @Home is gone, this is a good time to suggest the introduction of a little more honesty in the business. How about telling us which cities are capped and what the limits are. How about a list of the addresses, ports, and newsgroups that are being blocked, instead of having the customers reverse-engineer the knowledge for themselves? It's not like we don't know this is happening!!! They can either "face the music" from the customer community or just let them bad-mouth the service in private to people who are thinking about signing up. Pick one.
I'd like to see them use and RBL-like service on e-mail, and it would be nice if they could get the packet loss under 5%, but for now I would be happy to just get basic connectivity back while I consider my options long-term.
Here is the email that I received from Insight regarding their Insight@Home service (provided by Excite@Home):
Early this evening, Insight, along with other cable operators (including Cox, Comcast, Mediacom, and Rogers) signed an interim agreement with Excite@Home and the official unsecured bondholders' committee. This settlement agreement provides for continued service for three months, during which time we can accomplish an orderly transition to another high-speed provider.
The specific terms of the deal include a lump payment by the cable operators of $355 million, $10 million of which is Insight's portion. We agreed to pay this fee in order to extend the time required to ensure an orderly transition. This payment will not result in a price increase to you.
We're also actively continuing our discussions with other high-speed broadband providers. The offering of new providers will be the first step in opening up our network to bring more choices to our customers in the selection of their Internet Service Providers, fulfilling our vision of our broadband platform.
While today's settlement agreement is subject to court approval, we expect this approval shortly.
We have worked hard to ensure continued, uninterrupted broadband service for you and we're pleased it appears that effort has been successful. We appreciate your ongoing support of Insight.
Sincerely,
Kim D. Kelly
Chief Operating Officer
Insight Communications
If you actually READ the press release, you'll see it says the exact same thing quoted in a /. story yesterday. That is, that they've moved /some/ customers, and the transition is expected to be completed in "2 to 10 days". In the meantime, I'd make a stronger statement than the press release, and say that everyone else WILL (not "may") experience a "service interruption".
Ironically, as the dateline on the press release indicated, AT&T Broadband is based in Englewood, CO, but most of @Home's Colorado customers are still without service (I live in Denver).
The headline implies that AT&T struck a deal with excite, the linked articles do not say this and all other evidence continues to be that AT&T is moving its customers to a new network.
Am I reading this wrong? We've just gotten back online here in Chicago, and it sure ain't @home service!
In any event, I was able to get a different phone number that actually does connect with a tech (by calling sales who transferred me) -- that number is 866-447-7333. This might just be the number for my region, though. In any event, you can talk to an actual person if you have questions.
Lastly, the guy I talked with told me it could be 14 days from day of disconnection, at the latest, before service is restored. Even though I'm pretty impressed with how quickly AT&T has been able to effect the transition to their own network, I'm still expecting I'll have to wait the full 14 days, given that they don't even bother to list my state in their releases.
Oh well. As good a time as any to rebuild the server, I guess.
- Jonathan
"Are you serious?
;-)
Oh my god.
I could have made a shitty web site just like that for much less "
Don't you remember a company that paid 1bln for a website called slashdot.org?
The thing is that these outrageous sums were part of the game these times. Worthless companies were buying other worthless companies with their potentially worthless stock.
I don't think they have wasted much cash on BlueMountain (I might be mistaken though).
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
> And the "no server" rule is in the top four FAQs.
:-) Not that it matters, with the new dynamic addresses, servers are somewhat less useful. :-(
Correct, but my Port 80 still isn't being blocked.
I got a call last night from Mediacom, apparently they were calling customers en masse to inform them that they'd reached an agreement and service would continue uninterrupted. And it did (at least until today when someone dug up the cable).
But I also received an interesting piece of news. In my state (Iowa) AT&T had been collecting sales tax, and now they were informed that those taxes were not required. So they're giving everyone a credit sometime in 3 or 4 months from now. Or you can send a form to the State tax board and get a refund immediately (well, immediately in bureacratic terms, probably a month or two). My tax refund will be over $70. Now if I can just get my other ISP to stop charging sales tax!