pimplink

@home recently released a warning from auditors re its finances. Since there are millions of users who use them as their cable modem ISP, seems like we may get disconnected soon. Anyone know of a good highspeed ISP alternative for cablemodem that is NOT fucked?

Gary

huh? does that mean they are going out of business? Kicking off users? what?

playa

i don't get it @home business to make money by getting more subcribers,,,how can they make money if they delete accounts,,,

how can they make money by deliberatley cutting their revenue?

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pimplink

According to the release, they blew their wad on their lame ass Excite website. Sucked off cash from the rest of the operation. Company may go Chapter 11 soon.
Same as other companies like Covad.

Amputate Your Head

Well, I used to work for AT&T @Home, and I can tell ya, they ain't makin' no money. They didn't even project to make any money off it for at least five years. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if they sold out or shut down. Their expenses are unimaginable.

Indy

No they wont delete us... They'll just raise
the price to 600$ a month or so.. Anyway
there is always DSL.. I think you can get it most places now..

Amputate Your Head

Good luck. DSL is a fucking joke.

Gary

I have DSL near Ottawa and service is pretty good. I guess it depends where.

Gary

wait a minute, isn't @home run over mostly existing cable networks? How high can their expenses be? Its not like they had to lay down a whole new cable system.

BrettJ

@home's exec management are more interested in b2b and have neglected their residential business for far too long.

I don't doubt that business is an important component. b2b is stable. But with broadband - - residential consumers has huge growth potential.

I think there are 12-18 million - broadbanders in the US. 125million dialups. 300 million or so people.

AT&T has cable modems...but are they affiliated with @home?

~BrettJ
[email protected]

SykkBoy

I have DSL out here in middle of fucking nowhere, arizona and haven;t had a bit of problems with it...I use Citizen's, they are spreading into more places...a bit higher than average, but worth it so far...

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kane

At&T basically is @home. They bought @ home awhile back. I read the article about them speding too much money with excite and how they will more than likely go out of business before the end of the year. Where I live there a several DSL companies, a couple of friends of mine have DSL and say it is pretty good so if this happens I'll have to go to that I guess.

BrettJ

I like my dsl line. I have it thru Qwest. I was with Manage - which was affiliated with lightrealm and covad.

They were charging way too much...and still couldn't get a handle on their cash flows. From what I understand DSL is a hard business.

But I'm a smut merchant.... What do i know?

~Brett

Royaltee_Gee

Excite.com will go bankrupt this year.. Unless they get more capital. There funds are drying up quickly, and forecast to be broke by December.

So maybe you guys got Exite.com going down with @home

arent they too different companies?

Amputate Your Head

Actually, yes and no. We used existing cable where we could, but most of the stuff was not up to broadband standards and had/has to be replaced. And that means ALOT of trenching. They also provide their customers with the modems, which, if you go to Circuit City or some other type store to buy one, they run an average of around $250 - $300 for one modem. I know they get a bulk discount, but that's still a fairly large figure when you're talkin' about the size of their customer base. Then there is all the misc. supplies such as cable, fittings, e-boxes, amplifiers, etc.... trucks, labor.... believe me, it's a very expensive operation. Not to mention they were promo-ing everyone with two months free and free installation just to get those customers. It was ALL out of pocket and not much coming back.

Amputate Your Head

Yes.... it's a 3-way deal. AT&T, @Home, & Excite all joined to make it happen... @Home was virtually broke when AT&T took over.

Gary

Ya that makes sense. I live in the middle of the woods and cable is slowly working there way out here upgrading the cable along the way. Got DSL about 6 months ago. They put some wire in the mouths of squirrels and sent them running over the treetops to get to my house. I gave them peanuts as a small token of my appreciation.

Amputate Your Head

hehehe..... I hear ya. 75% of my customers were either ex DSL or soon-to-be-ex DSL customers. I heard nothing but complaints about DSL every day for a long time.

Amputate Your Head

On any given day on the job for AT&T @Home, they would send us out without fittings or splitters... with bad modems... no software.... no network cards... and for three weeks straight, no fucking cable! I know... I had the same question: How the hell am I supposed to run cable if I don't have any? Their answer? "Don't worry about it. Just make it work". Every day we were missing something. And these are not convenience items... that stuff is absolutely necessary to getting it done. They couldn't afford to keep supplies in the warehouse, and the techs ended up stealing shit from each others trucks when no one was looking. Pretty bad when you are forced to become a thief just to do your job. Then they cut everyone's pay. I eventually quit because I was working twelve hours a day and going home with $25 in my pocket.

There is no doubt that change is in the wind for them. The only question is what will will that change be and when?

MrPanama

I don't wanna switch to DSL

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yys

I doubt that @home will cease to exist. They my go bankrupt but that doesn't mean that they are going to drop everyone. As for the ? about @home just using the existing cable system, that is only the "last mile" of the connection. Contrary to what some of you might think the internet is not free. @home had to build a network of fibre that there customers traffic travels on, you didn't really think that you could surf the world on the same cable's runnng in your house. . If they do cease to exist I guess your connection will depend on the cable company your with. Up here in Canada there are 3 main providers(25% of @home customers) and 1 company, shaw communications is almost done building there own network for their traffic as well as there own data centers to house all the hardware and Cogeco cable should have there similar setup finished by the end of this year or early 2002. The largest up here is Rogers cable systems and they own a big chunk of @home and have said that they don't have any plans to build there own network and data centers so there customers my experience some problems if @home does at some point cease to exist.

MrPanama

Shaw/AT&T has bought @home here in Canada....there is no such thing as @home anymore.

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pimplink

Exactly! I'm getting spoiled on the occassional 3+MB burst speed of cable modem.

sasush

hahah
rogers@home will never go bankrupt this year or next year.Thats like you saying that AT&T will go down. I have rogers@home internet,cable,phone and tv. btw @home should kick off users who uncapped there modem and still neighbors bandwidth.thats like having 5 cable modems downloadind at the same time.

yys

sasush, all I was saying was that Rogers doesn't have any plans in place if @home ceases to exist and shuts their facilities down, unlike Shaw or Cogeco. If you have them then you know that they have had major problems in the last year all do to @home hardware failures. On the topic of uncapping your cable modem there is a good article here http://www.speedguide.net/editorials/uncapping.shtml on why it doesn't work.

Amputate Your Head

Thank you yys..... someone needed to put that stupid myth to bed. There is no uncapping, and EVEN if it was possible, (which it's not) AT&T can turn that and any modem off in the blink of an eye. Like the article says, you don't just plug it in an get connectivity. Without a technician in between the modem and the company, you don't get jack.
As far as them going out of business.... well, companys are bought and sold every single day. The dotcom fallout should be enough to tell you that just because a business is big does not guarantee it's gonna be around next year or next month.

Ludedude

Bad news @home users. http://www.hackinthebox.org/article.php?sid=3368

My DSL rocks....wouldn't trade it for anything except maybe a nice T-3.

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Amputate Your Head

Thank God I don't work for them anymore...
and I love my T1

pimplink

How much do you pay per month for T1? I'm thinking of getting that service.

Amputate Your Head

The suck part of this is that they (AT&T) capitalized on providing high speed service to the millions of people who are UNABLE to get DSL because of their location. Remember, with DSL, you need to live within a certain distance of the provider or you're fucked. So if cable modem service goes down... there's gonna be a whole lot of people back on dialup. You might try satellite... probably the next best bet... but there won't be anyone to pick up cable modem service if AT&T isn't providing it. Why? AT&T owns the fuckin' cable system. It isn't just @Home Internet service running through those lines. It's also Video and Digital Telephony. And Telephony is their baby.... they won't be letting that go down. They can't. Because those lines are no longer just for entertainment... (i.e. television)... when they added Digital Telephony to the mix, it became a public utility and they are now REQUIRED to keep that up. But they also have to pay a ton of money to these cities just to be ALLOWED to operate, contributing to their costs. San Jose, CA still does not have @Home Internet because the city wanted 5 mil a year to let them in and AT&T told them to go fuck themselves. The residents are still howling about it.
In any case, I think there may be a huge market for 56k modems again real soon.

playa

t1 can range between 300-1000 a month,,,




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Playa
icq#38147712
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sasush

oh no,no,no
yesterday i just ordered a new cable modem from ebay. if @home will be closed fuck,fuck i have to get dsl then but dsl SUCKS !!!

playa

another option http://www.starband.com/

i would hate to loose my cable




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Playa
icq#38147712
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sasush

today at 9:00 am my cable modem was down for 2 hours. My all lights on the cable modem was RED.

MrPanama

""Thank you yys..... someone needed to put that stupid myth to bed. There is no uncapping, and EVEN if it was possible, (which it's not) AT&T can turn that and any modem off in the blink of an eye. Like the article says, you don't just plug it in an get connectivity.""

Actually about a year ago a few hackers came out with a program that uncapped @home modems, I was downloading at upto 900k/sec, and uploading at 700k/sec, it was so nice. Then some idiot called @home one day and asked them if they could help him set up the uncapping program...lol...and @home fixed the glitch and now you cant uncapp anymore. So to say Uncapping is a stupid myth is a lie.

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Amputate Your Head

You're absolutely right Panama... they had a website up for it where you could download the thing with a message on the front saying "@Home Techs GO AWAY".

I should have worded my response better.

McPornGuy

I have starband let me tell everyone now, it FUCKING BLOWS!!! DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!
been using it for 6 months (half the time i just use my dialup connection)because it works better most of the time.

jimmyf

I've had DSL for over a year now and it's great, thru pacbell.net.
I will be moving to Fresno very soon and
every place I've checked, can't get DSL.

As to AT$T they do I believe have cable modem
service and it's called AT$T broadband that has zero todo with @home excite.

That's what I'll have to get when I move AT$T, but I would prefer pacbell DSL because
I've had very very few problem's with it.

I guess what ever you use you'd better know something about computer's and at least little about networking, because most tech.
support's are just plain old CRAP, including pacbell's DSL tech support.

I really do not know why some people knock something when they don't know shit about it.

How many of you people that have said DSL suck's or is shit have really used it for any amount of time?


Jim

[This message has been edited by jimmyf (edited 08-28-2001).]

McPornGuy

i wish i could get DSL here! the phone company "might" be updating the lines next year : ( think im going to have to move again.

Amputate Your Head

AT&T Broadband IS @Home. Same thing, new name.

AWC

I really like my shitty ass sucky DSL that never goes off and is pretty damned fast. Kinda neat living less than a mile from the CO.

Amputate Your Head

Sprint is supposed to have a satellite Internet system now... but I don't have any specs on it. I think it runs around $49 a month. (comparable to cable modem service) Does anyone know the speeds? Does anyone use this?

McPornGuy

i just went to there website and dont see anything about satalite. do you remember where you seen that they were offering it?
http://sprint.com/

Amputate Your Head

Found it: http://www.sprintbroadband.com/

MrPanama

In the past, satellite was always not worth it because you can only upload at 56k speeds, have they fixed that now? If they have I might think of switching to satellite

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Amputate Your Head

Well, this is from their site:

Maximum Download Speed: Up to 5 Mbps
Typical Download Speed: 512 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps
Maximum Upload Speed: Up to 256 Kbps

Not too fantastic, but better than a dialup.
It also looks like it's probably not available in all areas yet. But there's DirectPC too... another one I know nothing about other than they claim 400kbps download. (but that was years ago... they may be better now)


[This message has been edited by Amputate Your Head (edited 08-28-2001).]

Ludedude

I'm not sure the sprint offering is satellite is it? (I admit I didn't go to their page to look). Last I heard, Sprint was offering wireless broadband internet using a similar technology used in 802.11 wireless home networks. It's terrestrial, not satellite based.

I've read some dismal reports regarding the performance of the things due to such forseeable problems as leaves growing on trees in the spring LOL.

Anyway, I'm 3300 feet from the CO, my DSL runs at 7.1MB down, 1.5 MB up, so I'm happier than a pig in shit. Oh, and hook me up with 32 static IP addresses...what a country this America



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Amputate Your Head

You are correct-a-mundo Lude. Here's from Sprints site:

"Sprint's fixed wireless technology uses a stationary 13.5" x 13.5" diamond-shaped device called a transceiver that is mounted on the outside of your home, usually on the roof.

The transceiver is pointed toward a radio transmission tower that sends and receives signals. Once the signal is received by your transceiver, it is sent to the modem and computer in your house."

Earth based.
But..... I got my T1 here with speed to fuckin' burn, so I too, am happier than a pig shit.




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OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

dragonlady

New article on @home problems
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46219,00.html



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AdammairXXX

If your interested (and you live where its available) check out sprint ion. Top Download speeds at around 8meg. not sure on the website though. I know its available where I live but because I live in a multi-building complex I cant get it.

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