http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/11/28/tech:.excite@home/
Tech: Excite@home service, Toshiba, IBM cuts
updated 01:30 pm EST, Wed November 28, 2001
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Afternoon tech news: Bankrupt cable Internet access provider Excite@Home said Tuesday that it could cease providing service to its 4.1 million U.S. customers on Friday if it cannot renegotiate agreements with the cable companies that carry its service; IBM will cut about 4.6 percent (about 1000 of its 21,500) of the jobs in its microelectronics division; Toshiba will stop marketing desktop PCs in the US, noting that its "reach never went beyond more than 1 percent of the country's desktop PC market since launching its Equium line of machines in March 1997."
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@Home might deserve it...
As much as I hate to say it, @Home might deserve it. At least someone does :-)
I signed up when cable hit Des Moines 3 or so years ago. TCI was my provider. Then they become AT&T. Now they are Mediacom. This year my rate started going up. $39.95 per month suddenly became $45.95 without them even bothering to tell me (AT&T) then it went up again (Mediacom or AT&T, they aren't sure)... And again... It will be $55.94 come February 2002.
Don't even get me started on the @Home mail server problems that were happening last year (we switched to mac.com because of it). My page documenting my whining over this is at...
http://members.home.net/mailsucks/
I don't know who's fault it is, but raising prices 40% in 9 months doesn't seem like good business. The pricing may or may not be entirely up to TCI, AT&T, and Mediacom, but the crappy mail service for a year (as documented at places such as pobox.com) with them taking NO interest in fixing it just sounds like they are getting what they might deserve...
Thoughts?
(P.S. Yep, I'm a whiner about this. Now DSL in Des Moines is cheaper and faster -- $39.95/month including an ISP. Sad news for anyone who can't get DSL and has to either put up with the rate hikes or go back to dailup...)