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AT&T Broadband To Merge With Comcast Cable
quualudes was one of the many people to
submit the AT&T Broadband/Comcast merger. CNNfn has more of the story as well. 72$ billion is the cost. Wow. I wonder how this affects @Home. One alert reader also submitted the news that Comcast will evidently by launching a video gaming channel - more information will be coming in February 2002.
http://www.att.com/press/item/0,1354,4135,00.html
Collecting data is only the first step toward wisdom. But sharing data is the first step toward community
Since they went bankrupt. Now it's AT&T Broadband Internet. They've already changed my email address and throttled down my bandwidth. I hope it doesn't get worse.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Dammit, I switched to cable to get away from the chaos in DSL-land!
... the article says Microsoft was involved financially... i would bet a whole dollar that the Redmond grip will be felt eventually....
Comcast issues a more clear statement, saying they had brought AT&T flowers. The type of flowers were thought to be tulips, falling in with the funeral metephor.
Upon further inquiry, it seems AT&T has decided that they really just suck at being a large company and had to split once again, this time under their own influence, into several smaller companies.
If only certain other companies could make the same blundering mistakes to cause large debt requiring spinoffs....
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
As for the cable business, Comcast can only be an improvement. AT&T service was dismal, but typical of this truly out of date corporate dinosaur.
...that Microsoft gets $5 billion in "preferred securities as part of the deal?"
I guess that is better than AOL Time Warner buying AT&T Broadband.
*sigh*
Is that a joke? @Home is unrelated to this deal. ATT had a minority equity interest in "Excite@Home," the company that went bankrupt. AT&T is just a losing investor there.
"AT&T@Home" was a brand name for @Home service distributed by AT&T Digital Cable, not a corporate entity.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
The ATTBI service agreement was just about the most restricitve contract I've ever seen at an ISP. You weren't even allowed to post material that would be "considered embarrassing to a reasonable person"! Maybe this merger will make the agreement a little more sensible (and increase the bandwith cap while their at it too!)
The future isn't what it used to be.
Now I guess I'll have only the Home Shopping Network, the weather channel, and the 3 (*3*!) religious-oriented channels left before I can finish posting this. Oh well, time to sell that TV and the TiVo and start reading again ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
According to the press release on Comcast, AT&T stockholders will receive 0.34 share of Comcast for each share of AT&T they own, which is currently worth about $13.07. AT&T stock is currently selling for about $16-17. Unless there's some radical realignment in stock prices (e.g. Comcast getting hit because of the debt they're acquiring along with the assets), that means there's either some major synergy going on or else the market thinks that the rest of AT&T is worth about $4 :-) Hope it's the former...
is new again...
I used to have Comcast cable television and broadband internet service. When AT&T bought MediaOne, they also acquired the Comcast division that serviced my area. Eventually, the switch was made to calling the service AT&T broadband. I find it somewhat amusing that less than a year later, I'm about to be back on Comcast. AT&T broadband was so bad that I switched back to DSL and abandoned my cable television entirely. All AT&T seemed able to do was remove good channels (WGN Chicago, Speedvision, and some others) and run commercials advertising 5 non-functional customer service phone numbers and about a zillion ads informing paying customers that stealing cable tv is a crime. Maybe Comcast will learn something from AT&T's plans to take over the cable industry. Somehow, I kinda doubt it. At least maybe now I can have decent cable tv again.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Crap!
Just when I was hoping my damn connection would get stable. Got a signal to the cable modem a half hour ago after another 6 days outage after the 5 day outage during the excite debacle.
Now what, we gotta change all our settings, e-mail forwarding, accounts, etc.?
Can anyone recommend a high speed internet provider in Chicago that looks stable financially, and provides good service. And, dare I ask, has technicians that know their asses from gopher holes?
Or do I have to use the built-in 56K modem on my new iBook indefinitely?
Whatta pile a horse pucky!
I started with mediaone, which was bought by comcast. Now comcast is changing our email addresses, saying that they are moving our network off @home, but they were outsourcing tech support to ATT already, so essentially we were paying comcast for @home service and ATT support.
Looks like it's all going right to comcast now though so we may yet have one company providing our service.
On the good side - mediaone did an outstanding job setting up the network here (Ann Arbor cable rebuild) and I peak at 2.2Mb/S - if I'm talking to a fast server. Luckily UofMichigan mirrors all the important distributions and I get them at that speed.
Hopefully comcast will not only not fix it if it's not broken, but they will use this as a model for their other cable services elsewhere. 2.2Mb/S isn't ideal broadband, but it's certianly a step in the right direction.
-Adam
I think it is very funny (as in peculiar) that mergers like this happen. And once this all ends up being some kind of OmniCorp(tm) people start looking around saying that it is terrible that we have another monopoly. I rather fancy the analogy from Demolition Man, where Taco Bell has become the only survivor of the fast food chains.
Shakedown between AOL/Time Warner and ComCast/AT&T anytime soon? Likely to go on for years and cost tramendous amounts of money. Money that the customer will have to pay once the winner has the monopoly...
Or maybe I am just paranoid and this is all not going to happen. But I think it's interesting nevertheless.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
They REFUSE to sell you anymore bandwidth, no matter what you are willing to pay...
ATT wasn't able to evolve its IT systems to keep up with changes in its business. I remember back, prolly '94, reading about how they had a hundred or more different systems and how they had the enormous task of consolidating and modernizing these systems, the goal being a unified view of the customer (rather than the vertical systems they had for each business).
It wasn't that they didn't recognize this problem or try to do anything about it. They never came up with a workable strategy. Frankly, I'm not sure how you would even begin to tackle a problem like this.
It both sucks and blows. They rearranged the diverse public interest channels so they could give us, "AT&T 3 - Wicked Cool TV" Comprised of mainly ancient reruns including Gomer Pyle USMC, college football, a home shopping channel they already have on the cable lineup, and as for their "NEWS" well, it looks as if the high school drama club has made the big time.
This summer, I was disconnected on a Tuesday. I called them and after some hemming and hawing on their part, they finally agreed to reconnect me on Friday. I had to call a relative on the state comission that regulates cable TV to get them to move it up a day. I also had this relative get them to credit me for two weeks as recompense for disconnecting me in error. Yes, that's right, AT&T Broadband cut me off in error.
The picture quality on some channels is bad, the volume varies wildly between the satellite programming and locally inserted commercials.
You wait for at least 30 minutes while trying to get someone to answer a phone, oh, and their phone service! Once you've navigated phone menu hell, you listen to crappy music and hear some dweeb tell you to jot down the emergency phone number.
The emergency phone number presents you with exactly the same phone menu hell you get when you dial the regular phone number. And you still wait forever.
Thank Dobbs that the Boston cable TV system has been bought by a real cable TV company.
Someone else can use this here soapbox now.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I don't think that Comcast really cares about all the people quitting the internet service.
Keep in mind that AT&T Broadband is still the largest cable company in the U.S. So I think that what Comcast really wants is the regions that AT&T Broadband cable television is covering.
So although people may be leaving cable modems to go to dsl they aren't necessarily going to leave their cable television service, which is what I think Comcast really wants.
Thank you. Thank you. Please no applause; just throw money
As an ATT Broadband subscriber for TV, Internet, and PHONE, I can say that I have been following this case very closely. To sum up the whole bidding wars: its basically AOL vs. MSFT.
.NET, My services, even the Xbox cant be fully used without broadband. Earlier, Bill Gates said he thought the BB market was moving to slowly. If AOL were to get the deal, MSFT's plans would be severly crippled.
AOL was heavily looking into buying the corp which made MSFT very scared. MSFT's entire coming business plans rely on broadband:
MSFT started backing COX and COMCAST in the bidwars. I can say I am thankful that comcast won, even though its basically the least of the two evils (AOL vs. MSFT).
This deal is a lot more important than just ATT. It could play a huge role in both AOL and MSFT's core strategies.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
That's almost twice as many as AOL.
;)
So does this mean AOL will finally change their f!@#ing "No Wonder It's Number 1!!" Slogan?!
If so, that makes this merger fine by me
AT&T has been aware that its core businesses are shrinking, have been aware for a long time. The big purchase of broadband interests was Michael Armstrong's plan to reposition the company.
But these businesses were purchased at the peak of the Bubble. Much debt accrued. And the Bubble burst. Hence the need to sell, in order to service the debt that is crushing the company. Hence also the need for AT&T to try to price services in a way that will minimize their loss per customer.
You're right, the company is in godawful shape, but if you understand the forces at work, it's not difficult to understand why.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
1890s - Many small telephone companies exist in the USA. Calling from coast to coast is a slow, tedious process
1900s - AT&T is formed as a union between the various telephone companies, and becomes "the telephone company"
1900-1983 - AT&T network is built. While originally something only the rich and technically elite and adept have, the telephone soon becomes an fixture in every American home. Enormous technological advances enable faster, more reliable calling. Despite the size and complexity of the AT&T "Bell System", the "One company, universal service" concept enables quick, easy and reliable service coast to coast
1983-84 - AT&T is declared a monopoly and is ordered to divest itself of its local service providers and stick to providing long distance services. While this move created competition, it also created confusion and a general decline in the quality of service provided by long distance carriers and local phone companies. Cost cutting measures result even worse service to the customer. Calling coast to coast can become a slow and tedious process.
1995 - The online world exists in the form of local BBSes and various online networks such as CompuServe, Delphi, GEnie etc. Sending messages and communicating from network to network is a slow and tedious process. The Internet becomes available to the general public, linking up these disconnected resources into one common network, allowing information to pass from network to network easily.
1995-2001 - The Internet, once something only the rich and technically elite and adept have, soon becomes a fixture throughout the world. Enormous technical advances allow faster, more reliable network connections. Despite the Inernet's size, the universal TCP/IP standard ensures quick, reliable information flow between computers around the world.
2002 - AT&T begins purchasing local ISPs and nationwide service providers and soon becomes "the Internet company."
2003 - AT&T is once again declared a monopoly and is ordered to divest itself into separate companies. Individual regional networks form separate from nation and world wide "long haul" networks, giving the customers the choice of who carries their data around the world. Cost cutting measures cause a decline in the quality and reliability of various internet providers.
Any paralells?
-Wembley
offered a little more for @HOME. If they had, they'd probably be solidly on top of the Broadband heap (as well as solidly in debt). Refer to this article for more info.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
put all the Customer data into a huge database, placing each business the company runs in a seperate database,create an abstraction database that can pull from each sub database, and then hide all the diffrent applications behind a nice HTML/Javascript/VBA interface(including the database)
hey!! it worked for the state of Michigan!!! and everyone knows how efficient and well operating burocracies are.......right?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
AOL has been screwed since day one. They have painted themselves into a very colorful corner and can't get out. Think about this: They're whole business is based on software that is tied to their executioner - Microsoft.
They never learn! You sleep with Microsoft, you get burned. For example: Spyglass, Sybase, Novell, Citrix, Norton, and now probably AOL. Norton is still around but...
How many of you remember these days?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
BZZZT! The Time Warner in AOL Time Warner now is the biggest revenue contributor. Yes AOL's online service is beholden to MS, but this is not the "whole" business for them, not by a longshot. Arguably AOL is now more of an intellectual property arbiter with the huge assets Time Warner brought to the table. Look who is succeeding Gerald Levin - Parsons from Time Warner, not Pittman from AOL. Hint hint.
Ouch! Watch that zapper buddy.
I was speaking of the *part* of AOL Time Warner that is "AOL". That part stands to wither quite rapidly if Microsoft wants them to.
I figure that the Netscape investment was a kind of "you screw me I'll screw you" type of thing against Microsoft. Microsoft originally jumped ahead of Netscape, in marketshare, because AOL jumped in bed with Microsoft - by adopting Internet Explorer as it's browser. Now AOL is holding a new card by slyly suggesting that they'll use Netscape as their browser if Microsoft trys anything. Such a move would shuffle the numbers of browser users nicely in Netscape's favor.
Microsoft is now playing footsie with the Broadband business in a play against AOL. If Microsoft gets their hands on the infrastructure then AOL is a dead plucked chicken and they know it.
Remember, there can be only one. What will happen to UNIX if Microsoft slowly takes over the internet? I hope to GOD I don't have to see it happen.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Always a good time to see who owns what
AT&T sucks. They have managed to purchase a decent cable/broadband company and singlehandedly run it into the ground. Since AT&T's purchase of Mediaone, we've been subjected to increased downtime, crappy digital cable service, slow internet, awful customer service, all with them raising prices across the board. their digital box is the size of a VCR, has no hi-fi outputs (not that it matters, most of the channels are still analog), was designed 4 years ago, and the SLOW ASS interface is worse than my grandma's WebTV.
Crap. I just needed to rant about how much they sucked. Hopefully Comcast can improve the service a little. Personally I'll be happy if they can go for 6 months without changing their name. Since I subscribed, I had MediaOne for about 3 months, my cable was called MediaOne RoadRunner. Then it was AT&T Broadband, with AT&T RoadRunner for internet. Then the Internet was CALLED AT&T@Home, even though it was really the AT&T Broadband Internet network. Now it's called AT&TBI.
AOL, owner of CNN/Money, also lost out in its attempt to buy back AT&T's 25.5 percent stake in its Time Warner Entertainment unit, which includes Warner Brothers studios, HBO and its cable operations. That stake will become part of AT&T Comcast...
The largest cable company in the US owns 25% of the second largest cable company in the US.
Will Comcast seriously compete with Warner when it may be in their financial interest not to?
Choice in the market is good, unless they decide it's better for us to have no choice.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
In my area, here in central Iowa (Ames), Mediacom bought AT&T Digital Cable and Broadband, and in many other places around here. What's confusing me is did Mediacom buy out all of AT&T's digital services or just in the midwest? With stories like these, I get confused. I assume the buy-out was semi-local, but how will this affect Mediacom Broadband, formerly AT&T Broadband?