Broadband To The Home To Be Big Business
from the if-they-can-ever-get-it-working dept
Apparently, industry folks at the “Broadband Home” conference are positively giddy about the market potential for bringing broadband internet access into the home. That’s just great. Instead of spending time at conferences talking about how much money they’re going to make, they should be figuring out ways to actually get broadband access to the home. If it’s such a great market, why have 3 different companies that provided me with broadband access to my home gone out of business in the last 7 months? As of right now, the only service provider who will officially offer me broadband access is @Home, and they just declared bankruptcy – and every time I call them, they tell me it was a mistake that they originally told me they would provide service to my area.
Comments on “Broadband To The Home To Be Big Business”
@Home not likely to stop providing service
The umbrella group excite@home is in bankruptcy. It’s not liquidation so they’re not intending to fold.
That and Comcast, one of the participants in the @home network, has indicated they will continue to provide @home cable modem services regardless of excite@home’s condition.
Re: @Home not likely to stop providing service
Yeah, I’ve heard about all of that… However, I don’t see why it’s worth taking the chance. I heard the same thing from my DSL ISP when Northpoint went out of business. They made it very clear that there would be no interruption in service. A month later and my DSL connection was dead. I want to see something a little more concrete before I sign up for @Home (assuming they’ll even agree to offer it here). Nothing like living in the middle of Silicon Valley and discovering that you can’t get broadband access. If I had a really good arm, I could throw a stone and hit Excite@Home’s offices from my roof – and yet, every time I call them and tell them about the nice little post card they sent me telling me that @Home is *finally* available in my area, they explain that it’s not really available here yet.
Re: Re: @Home not likely to stop providing service
Interesting to see that nothing has changed. For years (yes, years) I got offers from @Home to connect my home, but whenever I would call, service was always unavailable. They would even hang offers on my doorknob — it doesn’t seem like you can get any more geographically targeted than that, but service would still be unavailable. Of course, they’d always be happy to put my name on the list to call when service was finally available. But when it finally was, I had to call them myself.
The only thing that kept them in business as long as they lasted was that the DSL companies were equally incompetent, if not more so.