ATTBI Gets the Green Light

Of the 1.4 million broadband Internet customers at AT&T, roughly 850,000 were served by the Excite@Home network. As previously reported, 86,000 of these customers in Washington and Oregon were immediately transitioned onto an AT&T owned and operated network. Since that time, the number has increased to 266,000. Reports are emerging that parts of the new AT&T system -- now re-branded as AT&T Broadband Internet -- are going live across various locales such as California, Georgia, and Texas.

BetaNews has learned from a well placed source inside AT&T that the company is planning for a period of 14 days maximum transition time for the entire country.

AT&T has sent instructions to customers on how to reset their cable modems for the new service. As subscribers are migrated over, they will be directed to a Web site where they will download a "configurator" that will reconfigure all their TCP/IP settings to work on the new ATTBI network.

BetaNews has also learned of a program floating around which automatically configures individual computers to stay online in markets that should be "hard down." AT&T has referred to this as a "rogue configurator," and has stated that it is not the application people should be downloading to transition. The company is attempting to track down the source of the program.

The events of the last few days have left AT&T tech support overloaded. At one point in time, 900 calls were in queue with paying customers waiting on the phone for hours. AT&T spokesperson Sarah Eder told BetaNews that the company was in the process of hiring additional staff to accommodate the influx of calls. Eder also went on to say that the company may complete the transition in fewer than 10 days, and challenged competitors to do the same.

AT&T customers will receive 2 days credit for each day the service is down. This reimbursement equates to about $3 dollars per day for the customer.

Once online, a homepage with content similar to the company's longstanding WorldNet service will serve as the replacement for Home.com. The attbi.com domain was registered on October 2, indicating the communications giant has been planning the transition some time. At present, ATTBI points to the WorldNet homepage.

AT&T's Eder did not offer a specific time frame on exactly how long the company has been actively engaged in preparations to go it alone, however she claimed that it made perfect sense to institute a "Plan B" whenever drawn into bankruptcy proceedings.

A Service is Born

Under AT&T Broadband Internet, customers will be able to own up to 6 e-mail accounts per service contract, one less than @Home offered. AT&T will provide Web access to e-mail, a first for its broadband subscribers. Dialup access to the network -- once offered as a premium service of @Home -- has been discontinued. Customers who are traveling must obtain connectivity from other sources.

Like most other broadband services, AT&T will help manage upload and download speeds to provide what it deems to be a faster and more consistent broadband service. An AT&T spokesperson compared @Home's service to an open hose that participating ISPs had to fasten. Under the terms of agreement, download speeds of 1.5 megabit per second can be reached, whereas uploads are heavily capped at 128 kilobit.

Eder told BetaNews that one of the benefits of running a self-owned service is that more options are available for customers. The company is flirting with the proposition of offering additional bandwidth to high demand customers under incremental terms.

In addition, a speedier and more reliable network is being built in comparison to @Home by utilizing SAS servers. The SAS complex is replacing the RDC (regional data center) that served as the heart of Excite's network, according to a source. SAS servers hold modem and computer provisioning information that will allow AT&T service technicians to "push" a new configuration file to errant modems in order to get them back online. Previously, customers had to endure the experience of crawling under desks to manually power cycle their modems.

Customers in Texas should realize connectivity as soon as tonight, while others are encouraged to request temporary dialup access. Bulletin board postings in forums strewn across the Web reveal customers who are eager to get back online. AT&T is working swiftly to avoid disruption of its user's personal lives, and in some cases financial losses to the business sector. Only time will tell whether or not the world's largest cable provider meets its self imposed deadline.

Nate Mook contributed to this report.