Posted on 12/01/2001 5:52:05 AM PST by Lazamataz
I'm an @home customer, AT&T to be exact. At 8:15 CST, I no longer could access any pages. Not google.com, not cnn.com, none of the old standbys that ALWAYS work.
I've heard a lot about the poaaibility of @Home pulling the plug on 4.1 million customers. Did it happen? The only reason I can connect at all is that my lovely and gracious fiance also has a dialup account for when she is on the road, and I am calling in here using that. I am presently on hold on the AT&T@Home help line. I'll have more information.
Technically, the light is on but no pages are being connected. My Cable Modem is up and connected but nothing loads.
Early Saturday, Bay Area customers found that they indeed could not send e-mail or surf the Internet. By Tuesday, most users were back online -- albeit with new "@attbi.com" e-mail addresses -- but not all were thrilled with the change.
"I got a call from AT&T saying my cable was connected, but my system doesn't work," said Pleasanton subscriber Dennis de Freitas, who called Pacific Bell on Tuesday to ask about its DSL program. He also tried to reach an AT&T customer support representative but said he couldn't get past the calls flooding the system.
Phil Richardson, a Pleasanton engineer, said he was pleased that he had been reconnected so quickly but was disappointed to find that his connection was not as fast it was before.
"We've got the car back, but it's running at 30 miles per hour, and they took the radio out," he said.
I defy AT&T to find a single customer happy with this and their pathetic replacement network.
AT&T Broadband spokesman Andrew Johnson said that the system is running at 1.5 MB downstream to "provide optimum service to all customers." The Excite@Home system ran at speeds on average of between 1.5 MB and 2.5 MB, he said. "The average person can't see the difference between those type of speeds," Johnson said. "They're still getting the full broadband service."
Excuse me.. The @home network never ran slower than 3MB in my tests. I usually got 4.5 MB. The attbi network is noticeably slower. In the speed tests I have run on attbi, I get results from 150 to 650 kbs. The @home network ran flawlessly.. I have had more outages (sporadic DNS failures) in less than 2 days than the entire time I had @home.
Eventually, AT&T plans to offer a tiered program that would allow subscribers to pay an additional fee for faster bandwidths.
Why does this not suprise me.. Hey AT&T how about a lower fee for this POS network that runs at 1/4 of the speed of @home.
Typically I saw 2.4-3.8 Megabits/second on @Home. Since they turned us back "on" the fastest I've seen is 0.65 Megabits per second.
Looks like AT&T pulled the old bait and switch.
Oddly enough, I resemble your post in totallity. I'm a Pleasanton cust-, er, victim who was phoned on Tuesday and notified that the service was back up and ready to go...just restart and follow directions, yadda...ummm, no. The lights are still out and no one's still not home at AT&T Broadband in this user's domecile.
Attempts to contact AT&T have proven futile, finally today we were able to get ahold of a live human being only to be told that there's a problem, especially in California, with service. Great.
Excuse me.. The @home network never ran slower than 3MB in my tests. I usually got 4.5 MB. The attbi network is noticeably slower. In the speed tests I have run on attbi, I get results from 150 to 650 kbs.
Ditto. Never less than 4, usually 4.5 mbps. I knew though, that when this thing is all said and done, that speeds would be greatly reduced and prices increased. Why am I not surprised?
Total bs. There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING resembling a signal coming thru my cable to this day. I was phoned on Tuesday that the service was ready. That was a lie. Now I hear the new service sucks. I am ready to yank the cable out of the wall, take it to AT&T and start whipping people until their flesh falls off.
I am not upset at losing service, I knew that was inevitable, but I am pissed at being lied to and told my service is ready and that switching is easy, when the truth couldn't be further away. This has been a botched job, and the people responsible need to be separated from their skin. It seems I am the last AT&T customer left without service, but then I doubt that since technical support is totally unavailable.
Dear Cox @ Home customer: An Agreement has been reached with Excite @ Home to continue your Cox @ Home service:
Good news! Due to an agreement with our vendor, your Cox @ Home high-speed Internet service will continue as we transition over the next few months to our own Cox-managed network.
We will give you advanced notice of any changes to your service:
We are currently finalizing our plans to ensure a smooth transition to our network. We plan to do this over the next few months and will be providing you with additional information. Please know that we will give you advanced notice of any changes to your service. We realize you will have many questions regarding this transition and in the coming weeks we will provide updates at www.cox.com/info.
Thank you for choosing Cox Communications and we appreciate your business. Sincerely, The Cox High-Speed Internet Team Cox Communications, Inc. Your Email [shirleykozlowski@home.com] is in our mailing list. If you would not like to receive future information or notifications of special offers from Cox Communications via e-mail, please click here to unsubscribe.
"A small but vocal group of former Excite@Home customers is complaining that connections have gotten slower since AT&T switched them to its own high-speed cable network."
"It's not their imagination."
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/011205/n04260329_1.html
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/12/05/BU129831.DTL&type=tech
That is what you get when a giant monopoly takes out a competitor, who they first befriended in a business deal... in this case... AT&T took out a pretty good competitor, by using what many of us feel was a bird dog position in their legal alliance in business.
Todays monopolies can get by with this crap because they have learned how to stucture their activities and actions in such a way as to get all the results of illegal monopoly practices, without actually violating the letter of the laws that were written. The effect is the same... Gates/microsoft, at&t/excite, big drug companies/herbal products... one man's "great business" operation is another man's monopolistic pig in a blanket.
Either way, people get hurt. I am sorry about at and t taking over MY excite as well... If I am getting much more than fifty six kay uploads... I will kiss your foot... and downloads are now crawling too.
And bitch.. my listen to at and t bitch about "power users" and the former "misuse" of fixed gateway certificates and in home servers... as if that is NOT what excite offered and sold... as if that is NOT what THEY offered and sold.... as if folks who might actually USE real broadband are somehow misusing the internet connection by expecting that in fact their writing and editing or graphics files for their home business are ILLEGAL to send over the net... when by their sales pros... such ITEMS which can be TWISTED by definition into being a commercial venture... are usually sold by THEIR OWN SALES folks as the better alternative (for A T and T's benifit)... than the business service.
Truth be told... many many americans telecommute. And AT AND T is unwilling to put those folks on a business system, because then they are LEGALLY liable, despite their "service agreements" to the contrary, for damages resulting from crappy service... and lack of firewalling at the extranet level. AT AND T does not WANT business clients, they want home users for ten bucks less a month so they dont' have to toe the line and face legal fees when their crappy service getsem into trouble...
EVERY connection in the USA should be 3 meg up and down minimum... if we are going to get going with our vision of the future.
As soon as I can get them out to install an 800 per month T1... its going to be done... and the first time they screw up... heh heh..... Its either that, or satellite.
Hey I resemble that remark.
Of course, @Home capped Usenet at 3Gb/72 Hrs soon after the switch. I'm biiiiitter. Now I need to pay for Newsfeeds and Newspig...
Comcast, AOL to bid for AT&T Broadband
Give us back the broadband service we had before Petition to AT&T Broadband
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