Excite@Home and Cable Companies Strike Three Month Deal
WashTech.com (the Washington Post's section that covers the technology industry) reports in today's edition that Excite@Home has reached a tentative three month agreement with a dozen cable companies including Comcast and Cox. This is important because the two companies are major customers of the @Home Network and neither of them are ready to switch over to their own alternative backbones.
Apparently AT&T Broadband has been left out of this deal. It's surprising that a company with such a large ownership stake in Excite@Home can be excluded from an agreement of this nature. There must be even more animosity between AT&T and the other parties to the bankruptcy negotiations than we had imagined.
This agreement is exactly what we called for last week. We congratulate the parties involved for doing the right thing for the customers so far, and encourage them to finalize the deal ASAP.
Update: We have now done several stories on the impact of various aspects of Excite's bankruptcy on cable companies and their customers. To see other stories, search CTDATA for Comcast Excite.