Lucifer, @Home currently only has 5,000 customers. This is a drop in the bucket compared to the competition, and IS a bit troubling.
They did their initial rollout in Silicon Valley, where you'd expect interest to be high. Perhaps everyone there already has T-3 lines running to their houses. :)
I know that I would never go back to any service that invoves using Pac Bell if I can possibly avoid it, after the screwing they gave ISDN customers. They basically low-balled the service, captured customers, then turned the screws. I would expect them to do the same thing with ADSL.
In any case, the daytime charges that Pac Bell has always had for ISDN (.01/minute) are quite unattractive for telecommuters, etc. I'd expect them to also charge similarly for ADSL. I also don't really expect ADSL to be priced attractively for home use. @Home is very, very cheap in comparison.
The "big deal" with @Work is not quite what you might think. My understanding is that they are NOT using cable to deliver a connection to workplaces, but conventional T-1, T-3 lines, etc. The kicker with @Work is the ability to have telecommuters connect securely to their LAN at work through a cable modem connection. Of course, there are other secure solution (Microsoft now provides tunelling software that can be used over the public Internet) but @Work provides speed that makes telecommuting much more practical. |
