From Bloomberg:
AOL Users With At Home Said to Cancel AOL 66% of Time (Update1)
AOL Users With At Home Said to Cancel AOL 66% of Time (Update1) (Adds AOL comment.)
San Francisco, April 26 (Bloomberg) -- America Online Inc. subscribers who also use the high-speed cable Internet service At Home Corp. have canceled their AOL accounts 66 percent of the time, Excite Inc. Chief Executive George Bell said.
At Home's purchase of Excite, an Internet directory, is also on track to be completed by late May, Bell said at the Hambrecht & Quist Technology Conference in San Francisco.
Redwood City, California-based At Home, which delivers Internet access through cable-television lines, wants to purchase Excite in part to combine its high-speed service with Excite's information and Internet services, such as e-mail. The combination will allow At Home to stack up better against AOL's network of entertainment and information.
AOL and others are lobbying U.S. regulators to force the cable industry to open its lines to competing Internet service providers. At Home, which is controlled by No. 1 long-distance company AT&T Corp., wants to offer other services, such as AOL, as premiums on top of its own service.
When asked about Bell's comment regarding AOL membership cancellations, AOL spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said, ''We are enjoying record membership growth and adding members at a record pace.''
The At Home service, which isn't widely available, had 460,000 subscribers at the end of March, while AOL said April 14 that it has 17 million subscribers. At Home didn't immediately provide specific figures on how many At Home subscribers also subscribe to AOL.
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