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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: red_dog who wrote (11987)	7/1/1999 7:35:00 PM
From: puborectalis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

UhOh........... Posted at 10:45 p.m. PDT Wednesday, June 30, 1999 AT&T atones for @Home glitch BY JON HEALEY Mercury News Staff Writer High-speed cable modem customers in six Bay Area cities have encountered so many problems with their TCI@Home Internet access that the company has decided to give them its most costly apology ever -- five months of service for free. It will also stop taking new orders in those communities until it makes repairs. The @Home service, delivered over cable TV networks that AT&T Corp. bought from Tele-Communications Inc., claims to provide an ''always on'' connection to the Internet that's 50 times faster than the speediest dial-up modem. But dozens of Web surfers in Cupertino, Milpitas, Los Gatos, San Mateo, Belmont and San Carlos have been plagued by sharp drops in speed and intermittent outages. Andrew Johnson, a spokesman for AT&T Broadband and Internet Services, said the company is still trying to figure out what's causing the problems. Although many users haven't reported any trouble, he said, the company will give all its Internet customers in those six cities free service through Sept. 30 while it re-examines the networks from the bottom up. Those customers -- about 1,000 in all -- also will receive credits for the fees they paid in May and June. The service sells for a little under $40 a month, so the credits and free months will cost AT&T nearly $200,000. This is the second time in recent months that a protracted network problem in the Bay Area has given TCI@Home a black eye. Late last year, many customers in Fremont were slowed to a crawl for three weeks by a combination of improperly installed equipment and a single customer's misdeeds. The latest developments were first reported in early May, not long after the @Home service was introduced in the six cities. About two dozen users lost service, some for more than a week. At first, technicians thought the outage was tied to high-speed networking equipment from Santa Clara-based 3Com Corp. But the intermittent outages and speed drop-offs continued even after 3Com engineers adjusted their equipment, prompting AT&T to look for problems elsewhere in the cable network. Johnson said that the two cable networks that serve the six cities appear to have been certified for Internet service before they were ready. To provide two-way, high-speed data communications, cable operators have to eliminate signal leaks, noise and other types of interference -- something they don't have to do as rigorously to broadcast television signals. ''There are some questions about the stability'' of the network, Johnson said, adding that the company would start the certification process over again by reinspecting every piece. Barry Hardek, director of operator marketing for 3Com's cable access division, also said his company plans to install new software next week to settle the issues with that equipment. TCI@Home's main competition in the Bay Area's residential high-speed Internet access market is Pacific Bell, which offers digital subscriber line service over regular phone lines for just under $50 a month.