Dec, 2001 : AT&T Begins Moving Customers to New Network

📅 December 3, 2001 - AT&T Broadband (attbroadband.com) moved about 330,000 cable Internet customers to its new high speed Internet network as of Monday morning, Dec. 3, less than 48 hours after the At Home Corporation shut off service for more than 850,000 AT&T customers. The At Home Corporation'saction followed a decision in U. S. Bankruptcy Court to cancel cable companydistribution agreements with At Home.

The customers moved to the new AT&T network so far reside in Oregon,Washington, and metro Dallas. Customers in San Francisco and Illinois arescheduled to be moved today and tomorrow, bringing the total added to thenew network to about 657,000.
Within the next few days the company will move the balance of its customersin other areas to the new network. Customers in Denver and Salt Lake Citywill be added on Wednesday. Customers in Hartford, Conn., Pittsburgh,Sacramento, and the Rocky Mountain region in the mountain West will be addedon Thursday. Customers in Michigan will be added on Friday.
"We're having good success in implementing our contingency migration plan.We deeply regret the temporary inconvenience to our Broadband Internetcustomers resulting from the Excite@Home service shut down, but we're inhigh gear and driving hard to complete the customer migration to the newnetwork," said Susan Marshall, senior vice president, Advanced BroadbandServices, AT&T Broadband. "I'm profoundly impressed by, and thankful for,the dedication and expertise of our network and customer care personnel, whoare working literally around the clock to get customers back up and running.We're appealing to our customers to stick with us as we add them to areliable, high-quality network that will serve them well."
AT&T Broadband has communicated with all of its high-speed cable Internetcustomers during the past few weeks to help them prepare for thesedevelopments. The company will automatically issue credits to any customerswho experience an interruption of service. Credits will be issued at therate of two days free service for every day of interruption. In cases wherethe temporary outage is a bit longer, customers will receive free dial-upservice from AT&T Broadband until they are restored to a high-speed network.
All affected customers will see these changes as part of their new service:
Email domain names will automatically change from @home.com to@attbi.com.AT&T Broadband Internet will feature AT&T WorldNet High Speedservice contentUpstream and downstream speeds will be managed to provide a fasterand more consistent broadband service
Customers formerly served by MediaOne are remaining on a separately operatednetwork. The areas encompassing those customers include Ann Arbor, Mich.;Atlanta; Jacksonville; Los Angeles; the Stockton and Fresno areas of CentralCalifornia; New England; Richmond, Va.; and St. Paul, Minn. A group ofseveral thousand AT&T Broadband Excite@Home customers in Boston andChamblee, Ga., - who had been acquired as part of recent cable systemacquisitions - on Saturday were migrated to that separately operatednetwork.
For the group of customers in the markets being served by this separatelyoperated network, the service will be re-branded as AT&T Broadband Internet.For the majority of customers in these markets, the network, Internetservice connectivity, email domain names, and data transmission speed won'tbe affected, the company said. The only change these customers will see isnew content provided by Yahoo!
Uncertainty around the future of the Excite@Home service, coupled withservice interruptions necessitating migration of customers to the newhigh-speed network, is expected to negatively impact growth in the company'snumber of Broadband Internet customers and revenue generating units in thefourth quarter of 2001.