@Home news update

[Cy]

Here is the email I got from Insight (Kentucky area).

"Monday, December 3, 2001

Here is an important update on the Excite@Home situation:

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"

Sounds like it could have been worse. i hope whatever they work out is fast and reasonably priced!

Cy

[TC]

Our service was switched over to MSN on Saturday afternoon. The speed sucks now, but I guess something is better than nothing.

[flounder43]

I got an email from AT&T, saying that their offer had been rejected...I am fine, though, because I have the AT&T@home service...

[Cy]

Bummer TC. :(

Cy

[FRANK]

It sounds like you got treated a whole lot better than the 850,000 AT&T customers.

After thinking about this for a few days now, I'm really disappointed with the way I, as well as the hundreds of thousands of other AT&T customers have been treated. As far as I'm concerned, AT$T (<Freudian slip!) has shown where the customer's place is in AT&T's scheme of things.

I feel like a "pawn" in their chessmatch for the dominance of the broadband market. They took a gamble at the "brass ring" with an unreasonable offer to buy Exite@HOME and left us holding the bag.

According to my math, if AT&T would have doubled their payments to Excite@HOME for only one month it would have equaled an amount less than their token offering of two for one that they have promised us for our inconvenience.

Apparently this option existed, and was exercised by other companies as brought out in the quote as posted by Cy;
"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"

This approach would have given them the time to make a much smoother transition for their subscribers than the option that they have elected to use. And this would also have shown at least an attempt to provide us with the fast, reliable, "uninterrupted" service they promised when they entered into a contract with me and the other customers.

I don't know how long I am going to remain as a customer of this company. I am a subscriber to other services offered by them as well. In addition to the internet connection I also use them for my cable TV, local phone service, long distance phone service as well as my cell phone. This situation has caused me to re-think my options, and I would imagine a lot of others have as well.

FRANK NOT@HOME anymore!

[Cy]

I understand your consternation. I am not with AT&T for internet service but I know others like TC who are.

Cy

[flounder43]

That is strange, here in MN, it was not a concern at all. AT&T, as the primary provider, did nothing wrong to me, and was pretty good in assuaging my fears...

In fact, we just ordered the phone service.

[TC]

I'm not with AT&T - our company is Charter Communications. I'm pleased with the ease of the transition, but there has been a very noticeable drop in speed. However they did tell us that only 1/3 of the full bandwidth is in place at the moment. The head end had a DS3 line, now it's only 1 T1.

[flounder43]

It must be a regional thing...

[FRANK]

Originally posted by flounder43
That is strange, here in MN, it was not a concern at all. AT&T, as the primary provider, did nothing wrong to me, and was pretty good in assuaging my fears...

In fact, we just ordered the phone service.

Quite the opposite is true here.

AT&T has left us in the dark for the most part. We did receive a computer generated phone message mid morning Saturday, sugar coating the situation. This message stated that there was a problem that was out of AT&T's control, blaming the court ruling, leading us to believe that the courts ruled to discontinue the service and AT&T's hands were tied. They went on to say they were going to migrate us over to their new system. They further stated that it should take less than "ten" days and they would call back next week and let us know the status at that time.

They offered no alternative options as for accessing the internet during this period, even though they also provide a dial up service (AT&T WORLDNET).

One would think that it would have been a good gesture in customer service / relations to make an alternative solution available to all of those "loyal" customers. I would've liked to have seen AT&T make an attempt to honor the agreement that they entered into.

If we as customers were to encounter unforeseen problems that would delay our payment to them, I'm sure that it would be considered unacceptable and our service would be suspended. Conversely, I feel that the way we customers (850,000 subscribers impacted by this) have been treated during this situation has also been unacceptable.

One other point that is easily overlooked is the timing of this, remember that the holiday season upon us and a lot of businesses heavily relying on sales during this period. I wonder what the financial implications will be with the exclusion of almost 1 million potential on-line customers three weeks, and potentially two weeks, before Christmas.

another .02

[TC]

It's funny how they seem to be doing different things for different customers. My parents are with AT&T and they got a letter that provided a phone number for Worldnet, user name and password. They also got the automated voice message. Their cable is still out though.

[nihili]

Originally posted by flounder43
It must be a regional thing...

Are you certain that ATT is your local provider? My provider is Insight (they've been more than wonderful through this) but all of the literature I've got says ATT@Home all over it.

just a though

nihili