@Home breaks 2 million mark
By Corey Grice
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 22, 2000, 9:00 p.m. PT
Excite@Home, the nation's largest high-speed Internet service, will announce
tomorrow that it has topped 2 million subscribers, a number that is closing fast on the
largest dial-up ISPs.
The company has added customers quickly in the past year, having reached 1 million
subscribers last December. Excite@Home began the year with 1.15 million customers.
High-speed, or broadband, Internet connections such as cable
modems and digital subscriber lines (DSL) are growing in popularity
among consumers for the faster downloads they enable. Potentially
high profit margins make broadband services attractive offerings for
large phone companies and major cable operators, such as AT&T,
which controls Excite@Home.
Because the market is becoming increasingly crowded,
Excite@Home and others are racing to sign up customers first in
hopes of securing their loyalty.
As such, Excite@Home announced a new plan to forsake
profitability for a year in an effort to grow rapidly. The company told
Wall Street in April that it plans to increase its subscriber base to 3
million by the end of the year, a figure that analysts will be
watching closely.
The company also said it expects to have 6 million customers by
the end of 2001 and 10 million by 2002. Previously, Excite@Home
had expected to have 2.5 million customers by the end of this year.
Executives continue to believe the company will reach 3 million
customers by the end of December, which is less than five months
away. But the year-end subscriber totals may include subscribers gained via Excite Chello, the
international joint venture that Excite@Home helped create last month, a spokesman said.
By comparison, Microsoft's Internet service, MSN,
has more than 3 million subscribers, while
EarthLink Network has 3.5 million customers.
NetZero, the nation's largest free ISP, has more
than 5 million registered users.
America Online, the world's largest Internet
provider, is approaching 25 million customers and
has plans for high-speed Net access services of
its own.
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