Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Kieran on November 29, 2001, 06:44:00 AM
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Forgive me, I know this doesn't belong in general, but...
Excite users should know that starting tomorrow they may be blacked out. Excite is bankrupt, and the plug may be pulled. Better tell your squaddies now, or make alternate plans if you were going to attend any Internet events for the next few(?) days...
This is also to let the rest of you know where some of your compadres are if you should not be able to contact them or if they aren't around. :(
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yep i heard this also...I heard that Comcast is thinking about buying excite (possibly).
Not sure on that but thats the rumors.
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No Comcast is not going to buy @home. There is no current relief for @home. The court rejected AT&T's bid and there are no others in the queue.
With the cable companies suddenly faced with the prospect of becoming ISP's overnight, it is going to be interesting to see what happens.
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I'm an @home user and my cable company contacted me more than a month ago. The e-mail changed from skernsk@home.com to skernsk@SHAW.ca so I assume they are going to handle it.
I guess I'll find out soon enough...
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yikes i remember training in san bruno with some people from excite at an internet accounting seminar back in the late 90s when no one knew what they were doing.
all us internet startups were like "man we are running out of wheel barrows and closet space what do we do with this cash?"
or
"how do we revive an investor who dies smiling when we tell them how much we made?"
thats was just before they got stinking rich and now they are already busted. amazing...
those people's biggest problem back then was boxster or carrera and they were damn smug about it too....
i never dealt with their @home people too much but their ad sales department all became millionaires
- sheesh remember when advertisers would pay stupid big money just for impressions never mind the cpc!?
"why mr bergman your ad got 120,000 impressions! all those eyeballs" (of course you only sold $2.27 worth of product and your door to door flyers brought in about $,80,000.00 but never mind that now)
"well ...ok...i guess i can give you another 1/2 million..."
"that's a good boy - your people, my people, lunch, ciao"
lol man those days are gone....
the company i used to work for had their stock at $120 per share a few yrs ago. I sold mine when it dipped around $35(wish i coulda sold it sooner but wasnt vested) and today it is at $3.77 and dropping!!!!
my wife's company actually breached the $0.50 mark and might be delisted after selling for over 100 times that a few years ago
oh the humanity <brando on> "the horrah" :)
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The cable companies that are using excite's assets are scrambling to incorporate their own. Cox (who is what I use) had plans to be fully on their own network by Summer 2002. Their word to the media was "we've upped the time table on that." I'm not sure what will happen in my neck of the woods. It really depends on the backbone here. All the local network for Cox here is their own, AFAIK.
I may or may not be online this Friday night as a result.
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Yup, I figure it's "Lights Out" for me come tomorrow. Insight Communication opened the e-mail with "@Home may be blacked out Friday" then proceeded to "but we don't think so". Writing's on the wall if ya ask me.
Damn shame, the connects have been outstanding here, too.
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Kieran, the handwriting has been on the wall since the first day @home opened for business.
I have been saying all along it was only a matter of time before they went under. The price point for the service is too low to sustain any growth and provide decent connectivity.
You have to figure the cable companies will increase the rates to somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 to $60/month. This is what I calculate to be a near break even point in order to sustain any quality of connection and maintain any reasonable growth.
I am very curious how the cable companies are going to handle becoming an ISP.
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at least you've received an email. Nothing here yet. Guess I'll call and see what they say. Specifically "IF we lose service for more than a few days, will you be charging me for the downtime???" ;)
Got off the phone with them. Any downtime will be credited on the next bill (including modem rental). They've set up a website and phone number for information.
Cox@home subscribers info (or if you're just curious) (http://www.cox.com/info/)
[ 11-29-2001: Message edited by: Nifty ]
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Just had that conversation with my brother. The answer is "yes" if my experience with business recently means anything. They can hardly afford to not charge their customers, and the customers have the right to stop being customers, so...
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Skuzzy,
Can you explain what you mean by the local cable companies "becoming ISP's"? Will things change with regards to their network, etc.?...or do you just mean from a business perspective? I know locally, they are moving people onto different email servers, but that's all I've been able to find out so far.
bowser
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Basically bowser, the cable compaines are having to take over the Internet service side of things from @home.
Due to the debt @home has, its assets are frozen so the cable companies are having to buy and install equipment for the Internet operations or arrange to have other ISP's act as the service provider. The latter is not happening anywhere I know of as none of the existing ISP's want to have much to do with the cable modem business.
It will be pretty interesting to see cable companies running the Internet side of things.
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Think of the local providers as franchise owners. The parent company has gone under; the parent company is where the service was derived. The local companies have to scramble to get Internet to resell to their established base. This means they will have to strike a deal with another broadband provider, and quick. AOL, Road Runner, Sprint, ATT, and a few others might be able to do it, but it is a matter of how fast that can happen. Even if it happens tomorrow it is almost certain prices will go up.
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Yikes, hit my answer two minutes after you, Skuzzy!
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Heyas Skernsk I believe we canucks be ok for the most part.
Rogers took over the @home network here in toronto, my emails etc changed to @Rogers.com
SKurj
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A little more complicated than that.
excite is bankrupt. The price point to the consumer was ridiculous. Even worse was the price charged to the cable providers. Currently, the Cable companies pay excite something like $20/customer. They used to pay _far_ less. AT&T, one of those cable providers, is trying to buy it up for something like $300 million. Up until the offer, AT&T had a controlling interest in Excite.
Now go back to what Scuzzy said -- the writing was on the wall from Day 1.
The creditors are claiming that AT&T used its controlling share of Excite to bankrupt the company intentionally so that they could get a dominant share of the broadband market at firesale prices. Their reponse is to request Excite's assets be frozen until AT&T makes a more reasonable offer (or the thing is settled in court).
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ExciteAtHome Cleared to Disconnect
Updated: Fri, Nov 30 8:26 PM EST
A judge said bankrupt ExciteAtHome could turn off its high-speed cable Internet service this weekend, which could affect more than 4 million subscribers around the country.
Lawyers for the cable companies that connect their customers to the AtHome network said they planned to appeal the decision to U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Meanwhile, both sides continued to negotiate in order to reach an agreement that would keep the service running.
Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Carlson said Redwood City-based ExciteAt Home could reject its existing contracts with the cable companies as early as 3 a.m. EST Saturday.
The judge was unmoved by the argument that he shouldn't close down the network because it would affect consumers.
"The end users may be affected by these proceedings, but they are not parties to these proceedings," Carlson said. "Bankruptcy typically causes much disruption all the time, leading to loss of jobs and services to communities."
The ruling affects many of the nation's largest cable companies, including AT&T, Comcast Corp. and Cox Communications Inc., that sell Internet access through AtHome's network.
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.
ExciteAtHome wants the cable companies to pay a substantially higher connection fee to use its network. Until ExciteAtHome's bankruptcy, the cable companies had been paying a monthly fee of $12 per subscriber. Last month, the cable companies agreed to increase the monthly fee to $20 per subscriber.
The cable companies typically charge their customers $40 to $50 per month to use the AtHome network.
By forcing the cable companies to pay even more to use the high-speed Internet service, ExciteAtHome and the company's bondholders hope to prove the network is worth substantially more than the $307 million that AT&T has bid for it.
The bondholders have accused AT&T of using its controlling position on ExciteAtHome's board to steer the company into bankruptcy as part of a scheme to buy one of the nation's biggest high-speed Internet networks at a bargain price. AT&T has denied the allegations.
Comcast, Cox and Insight Communications had put together an offer to outbid AT&T, but withdrew the proposal when Carlson refused to delay Friday's hearing, said Charles Cohler, an attorney for Comcast. Cohler didn't provide details of the offer.
The bid wasn't substantially higher that AT&T's, said Don Morgan, managing director of Mackay Shields, one of ExciteAtHome's largest bondholders.
The uncertain fate of ExciteAtHome's network could be resolved quickly if the cable companies agreed to share more of the revenue generated by customer subscriptions, Morgan said.
"There is a simple solution to this problem. Money makes this problem go away. Subscribers need to realize that they are paying $50 a month for this service, but (ExciteAtHome) is seeing very little of that," he said.
Lawyers for the cable companies have equated ExciteAtHome's tactics to blackmail.
The bondholders "seek to play a 'game of chicken' in which the threat of a blackout is used to extort the (cable companies) into paying yet more for AtHome's services," AT&T said in a brief leading up to Friday's hearing.
If ExciteAtHome pulls the plug on its service, the high-speed network will become even less valuable, cable company lawyers contended in Friday's hearing.
"This will kill its value as a going concern," said Cohler, who likened the possible shutdown to a "murder-suicide."
The cable companies have been warning customers during the past few days that the high-speed service might be disrupted, but their contingency plans remain sketchy. Some are offering access to dial-up Internet service _ an unacceptable option for many customers accustomed to high-speed access.
"If they shut down, I will start looking for another service as soon as possible," said AtHome subscriber Todd Ambur of Fremont. "I need Internet service all the time and there is no way I am going back to dial-up modems."
Lauren Adair of Philadelphia said her home business would suffer if she loses AtHome's high-speed service.
"My work would suffer if I had to dial-up every 15 minutes to check my e-mail, and downloading files would take forever," she said.
Cox is "trying to do everything we can to make sure our customers get uninterrupted service," company spokeswoman Susan Leepson said Friday. Cox has about 550,000 AtHome customers, with the largest concentration in the San Diego and Phoenix markets.
Officials at Comcast and AT&T did not return calls seeking additional comment. A statement on the Comcast Web site said that negotiations were continuing and that it was not aware of any planned termination in service.
In a letter to Carlson before the hearing, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell urged the court to provide for an "orderly transition" in the event it decided to discontinue service, "rather than a precipitous shutdown."
Carlson expressed confidence his ruling would force the cable companies and ExciteAtHome to settle on new terms before the network was disconnected.
"It is obvious the cable companies are vitally interested in keeping the service alive," Carlson said. "It is reasonable to assume these sophisticated parties will find a way to share the value of (AtHome's) continued operations."
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On a side note, how's Adelphia doing?
We have it up here in Maine, I had it for several months and it was horrible. I read on DSLReports there is a lawsuit in the works...is Adelphia in similar hot water (or close) oh-swammi-Skuzzy? :D
I'm just glad I went to Verizon DSL!
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This is the latest info I have!
Excite@Home saga (http://www.insight-com.com/net/UPDATES/)
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Originally posted by SKurj:
Heyas Skernsk I believe we canucks be ok for the most part.
Rogers took over the @home network here in toronto, my emails etc changed to @Rogers.com
SKurj
My email has changes also to @shaw which is the local cable company. I have noticed poor download speed and when I popped into the game yesterday to show someone I got disco'd a few times in the ten minutes that I tried to login.
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As a side note, AT&T got me back up late Sunday night. I've gone back down twice for a few hours each time since.
I've also noticed 2-3 times the amount of activity on my cable modem. This is all external as I disconnected the cable modem from my network to check. Ever since Code Red I've have continous external hits but now it has tripled.
It appears I'm now exposed to more infected servers. Is this because there is less in place to block these attacks or because there are now more PCs on my network/subnet?
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Just noticed I had posted message number 99. This is a shameless post to see 100. ;)
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I had AT&T was never down, changeover was 10 min. ;)
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Well AT&T is down in the Utah area.
I've been down since saturday and still no internet service :confused:
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Im back!!!! Was out of internet for a few days but now attbi works.
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Well Comcast is still chuggin, so far so good :D
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AT&T was cut off. Their bid was rejected by Excite, and when they refused to come back to the table to ante up more dough Excite exercised its right to terminate service.
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Grunherz.. where are you located?
I have the same .com now... in Aspen.