Document text
AFN could benefit from @Home problems Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Charter Communications� network engineer Randy Horn works in the company�s Medford office on Monday. By Greg Stiles Mail Tribune Ashland resident Bill Greenstein was one of the earliest Charter@Home high-speed Internet customers, signing on when service became available in July 1999. "I wasn�t going to wait for Ashland Fiber Network," Greenstein said. "In fact, AFN only came to my node last week. I�ve had great high-speed service all those months." But Greenstein is re-thinking his options now that Charter@Home service is in doubt. He and about 5,000 other local Charter Communications Internet customers could temporarily be without service come Nov. 30. The scramble is on to prevent interruption of high-speed service brought on by the impending demise of Excite @Home, which provides Net service to 3.6 million cable television customers nationwide. Many Charter customers lack readily available high-speed alternatives. If Charter�s Internet service goes down temporarily, it could provide an opportunity for financially struggling competitor Ashland Fiber Network to pick up new customers in the markets it serves, primarily Ashland, provided AFN can hook them up fast enough. When Charter Communications bought Falcon Cable in 1999 it inherited @Home contracts. On Sept. 28, Excite @Home, of Redwood City, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection. Since then Charter Communications has been frantically preparing for the hour @Home goes dark. A San Francisco bankruptcy court judge is expected to rule on @Home�s request to terminate contracts by Nov. 30. Charter group vice president Ron Hren, who oversees the company�s Oregon operations, says the company is preparing a local point of presence (POP) that should be in place by the end of the month. The POP will provide a local gateway into the Internet for Charter Pipeline � the company�s own high-speed service brand. The portal replacing Excite.com will be MSN.com, Microsoft�s Internet portal. "As of now we can�t make a commitment, but everyone should stay cool," Hren said Monday. "There will be plenty of bandwidth and the POP connection will be the largest docking point between San Francisco and Seattle. We�re hoping to have a smooth transition." Hren said Charter has approximately 5,000 cable and another 1,000 Internet customers in Ashland. No sooner had Charter begun e-mailing its Ashland customers on Friday, than the phone started ringing at AFN. Although this is a potential boon to the nearly 2-year-old AFN, the city-owned entity has no immediate plans to expand its four-person installation force. AFN chief Dick Wanderscheid said Monday the agency is booked through Dec. 4 for new cable and Internet hook-ups. "In the best of all worlds, we�d be able to focus on people coming over from Charter," Wanderscheid said. "But there have been a lot of other people loyal to us." Loyal or not, there are a lot of customers � here and around the country � mulling their options as a judge decides the fate of @Home. A memo sent to customers by Marwan Fawaz, Charter�s northwest operations vice president, said that if @Home�s service is discontinued on Nov. 30 "there is likely to be a gap in time from the @Home shutdown until the date Charter will be able to provide Charter Pipeline in your area." For customers such as Greenstein that creates a dilemma. He does his banking, tracks mutual fund accounts and other business electronically. Greenstein said his monthly Charter@Home bill has been $31.53, including fees. (The monthly rate in Medford, according to Hren, is $35.95.) "I will never go back to dial-up service again," Greenstein said. "I�m thinking about pre-emptively going to AFN, because all of the sudden there is going to be this huge wave of people hooking up to AFN and that could mean a delay of months." Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.