Its a game of chicken. But based on how poorly the game was
played with Northpoint, I wouldn't be surprised to see at least
some of the cable companies like Charter to move to their new
network as soon as the contract is ended.
The judge said the company and bondholders could negotiate new
deals with the cable companies. Cox, AT&T, etc could come to a
new arrangement to continue service before Midnight (PST as someone
pointed out @Home is a California based company). If they don't
come to a new arrangement, the company and creditors can cease
service at Midnight.
The US Bankruptcy Courty handling this case is
http://www.canb.uscourts.gov/
They have a section on the "free" part of the web site on
the Excite@Home bankruptcy under "Pending Large Chapter 11
Cases." But there is no information.
The fee-based PACER system would have the complete text of
the judge's order.
[snip]
The judge said the company and bondholders could negotiate new
deals with the cable companies. Cox, AT&T, etc could come to a
new arrangement to continue service before Midnight (PST as someone
pointed out @Home is a California based company). If they don't
come to a new arrangement, the company and creditors can cease
service at Midnight.
For what it's worse, AT&T has gone through a lot of trouble
to assure it's customers (including me) that our service
will only be interrupted to the extent that home.excite.com
may be unreachable for a short time, no other aspects of
the service should be affected (this is pointed out clearly
on their tech support line, as well as in a letter seperate
[snip]
Now, if only I could find someone at AT&T that knows how
to fix the reverse DNS for the netblocks in Minneapolis...
Matthew S. Hallacy
I've had no problems, apparently some people are on AT&T @Home, while
others are on AT&T Broadband, I am an AT&T Broadband customer, some of
my friends (Atlanta, Seattle) are AT&T @Home customers who no longer
have access, AT&T claims that everyone who lost access lastnight will
be online with AT&T Broadband within ~10 days.
Matthew S. Hallacy
I think it depends on whether you were originally a MediaOne cable system
or a TCI system. MediaOne systems still use Roadrunner as their ISP,
while TCI was Excite-based. Lucky for me, I'm on a former MediaOne net.
That's not correct. The old Mediaone/AT&T Broadband regions are
not using RoadRunner. The systems and staff were split off from
RoadRunner when AT&T had to divest it's interest in RoadRunner
(as part of the AOL/TimeWarner merger, IIRC).
-j
The last time my host actually resolved, it resolved to mediaone.net, as well
as the others still in my area that do resolve, my mail/news/proxy etc are
mediaone hosts, AT&T Broadband is what's on my bill, and I call Road Runner
for technical "support" (eh? your internet is broke? what's that all aboot?).
It's an interesting mix, and nobody has any idea what the others are doing,
my cable was once disconnected by a cable tech (contract worker, not an AT&T
employee) who had gotten the wrong apartment number (he chose to ignore the
bright orange tag that proclaimed the existance of telephone service), I called
AT&T locally, they said I had to call RoadRunner, I called RoadRunner and they
kept trying to get me to reboot my cable modem and check my internet settings
(my AT&T phone service was dead, no picture on the TV, and no cable sync)
it eventually took a call to the AT&T phone service department, and a few
comments about 911 availability to get them to send someone out and plug
the cable back in. I'm happy with the service, when they aren't breaking it.
Matthew S. Hallacy
Dumb question. If AT&T knows it will take them 10 days to fix their
network, why didn't they start 11 days ago? If AT&T had done that, it
would have been finished already. I guess I will never understand
the logic used by telephone companies.
On the other hand, I don't understand what this gets Excite@Home's
creditors. Once AT&T transfers its subscribers to a new network, why
does it need @Home's network assets. Over the next 10 days, @Home's
value to AT&T drops to zero.
Heck, Priori handled their shutdown better.
But the contracts have a life to run.
I'm on a former MediaOne system in Newton, MA, and on the cable board
here, and I can assure you that a lot of the infrastructure feeding my
cable modem comes from Roadrunner, not excite - though there seem to have
been some changes over the past month or so.
Because AT&T didn't have the right to break the contract (by essentially "Stealing" @H customers), only E@H had that discretion (as the party to whom the contract was "unbearable"). So until AT&T's contract expired or was terminated, AT&T had to stick to it, but now that the contract is terminated, they can haul ass converting the users over to their own system.
At least that's my non-lawyer interpretation, given the various stories I've read. 
D
AT&T couldn't move people off of @home because there was still a valid
contract in place, until Excite broke it and turned off service.
I don't know if Excite@Home had a different contract with AT&T, but
Charter Communications moved 90% of its subscribers to a different
upstream by Saturday. Charter's spokeperson said they only had a few
thousand subscribers left on @Home. Charter's VP said they had teams
working for the last two months in preparation for the cutover.
Charter's actions seem to demonstrate that when management thinks its
important to get the job done, it gets done.
If Charter could do it, I would expect other providers could have done
it, if their management wanted to do it.
Folks should also keep in mind that legacy MediaOne customers do not appear
to be affected, as they are on a seperate network.
- Daniel Golding