AM a freelance writer working from my house, and a high-speed Internet connection over a cable modem is my main link to the world. So word of financial problems last year at Excite@Home, my Internet service provider, worried me. If it died, would I still have my connection? Would I keep my e-mail address?
Then, at a New Jersey diner, I overheard some people from Comcast (news/quote), the cable company through which I had Excite@Home service, discussing the problem. When I asked, they reassured me there would be no interruption in service, come what may. Comcast, which then had three quarters of a million high-speed Internet customers (now 950,000), had been working on its own system since last January.
On Nov. 30, a bankruptcy court allowed Excite@Home to cancel or renegotiate its contracts with the cable companies that connected it to four million customers. AT&T (news/quote) Cable's 850,000 customers were cut off — some for a week — when negotiations with Excite@Home failed. Comcast and Cox did better, contracting for service until Feb. 28, to ease customers' transitions. Here's how my transition has gone:
DEC. 11 E-mail from Comcast announced "a very exciting transition to Comcast High- Speed Internet" (encouraging, but I'd prefer it unexciting); all customers were to be transferred by Feb. 28 and we'd have access to our @Home e-mail until then.
MID-DECEMBER A postcard alerted me that a transition kit was coming, that I should call if it didn't arrive by the 21st and that I needed to take action by Dec. 27 to maintain Internet service. The kit included a CD- ROM with installation software, a subscriber agreement, a price list, a form letter and a simple 3-Step Guide to the switch.
The letter explained that I would have only one Comcast.net e-mail address until mid-January (I have three @Home addresses) but eventually could have up to seven, and that I'd gain My File Locker (a block of Web space to store personal files like photos) and remote access to my e- mail.
But while the 3-Step Guide and letter said my e-mail address would stay the same except for the domain name (comcast.net instead of home.com), the guide also showed my user name as a 15-character string — nothing that I or my correspondents would be able to remember. I called Comcast's tech support line. It took me many tries, with long waits on hold on each attempt. The techie who finally answered said, "I can't help you, because the user names haven't been assigned yet," and told me I should call back on the 26th. Unsatisfied, I called several more times, but couldn't get through.
DEC. 26 I tried calling back. Oh, I tried. So, I suspect, did most of Comcast's other @Home customers. Some probably got through; I wasn't one of them.
Meanwhile, an automated phone message from Comcast told me that if I hadn't already run the software disc from the transition kit, I should download a different installation program from a Web site. Downloading the 13.8-megabyte file took only a few minutes, thanks to my still-existing high- speed @Home connection. Good thing I did it, though: Comcast, I later learned, had discovered that the disc, which installed Microsoft (news/quote) Internet Explorer 5.5 as the Web browser, would create problems for users of Microsoft's IE 6.0, and apparently a major problem for users of Windows XP (with which IE 6.0 is tightly integrated).
"Only the first wave of customers got the disc," a Comcast spokesman, Tim Fitzpatrick, told me later. "Most have downloaded their installation software from the Web, and we constantly update that to cure any problems we uncover. Further, there's a fix available for those who did install IE 5.5 over 6.0."
My main concern was about which user name would work, but I couldn't get through to Comcast to ask. So I tried the installation, which takes about 15 minutes, with my old user name. When that didn't work, I tried my new one — which also didn't work. With either name, the software seemed to be working fine until the final step, registering online, but it never connected.
Netscape, my main e-mail program, still reached my @Home e-mail, but now it had lost Web access. It was hard to find out why, because sometimes my other browsers would get access to the Web and sometimes not, a sign that Comcast's servers were having problems. (About 10 percent of Comcast's customers in my county had intermittent service or none at all, I found out later.)
DEC. 28 I figured how to find which user name the new network would accept: send messages from @Home to my old and new user names at comcast.net. The first one bounced back, showing me that only the 15- character one would work. So I reran the Comcast setup program, entering the long name. Again, all went well for 15 wasted minutes, but the software couldn't get online to register. Tech support told me there were still server problems, but said they would be fixed within 24 hours.
DEC. 29 I ran the setup again; same problem. This time, tech support said there was a database problem — no record of my account was linked to my phone number, and the one linked to my cable modem's ID number wasn't the same as the one on the transition mailing. The techie was sympathetic: As an @Home customer with AT&T Cable, he had had transition problems, too. He gave me a phone number for higher- level tech support.
That number answered instantly: a recording. I was on hold forever, then my call was dropped. This happened several times, then I got busy signals after the keypad menu. I gave up.
DEC. 30 After I waited on hold for 10 minutes, a techie told me that the servers had been up and down, that I should try to sign on with the long user name and that name changes, password changes and multiple mailboxes wouldn't be available until late January. That meant I'd have to hand out business cards with lame-duck e-mail addresses at the Consumer Electronics Show the next week.
DEC. 31 My installation finally worked. I now had e-mail via Comcast.net, at least when I could remember my new user name and password.
I also had Web access, at least with Internet Explorer 5.5, which told me that Comcast's Web server was working. But Netscape still couldn't get Web access, giving me an error message about "proxy 8080." I checked Netscape's browser settings, found a reference to that, then called Comcast tech support — by now, I could actually get through — and confirmed that no proxy should be used. Now my Netscape software worked again.
JAN. 5 Some friends (including those who connected to @Home through other cable companies) are still struggling. But by the time you read this, Comcast expects to have about 380,000 subscribers switched successfully to Comcast.net. The remaining 600,000 subscribers will be switched over "well before @Home's Feb. 28 cutoff," promised Dave Watson, a Comcast executive vice president.
I can't say I've enjoyed the transition. Neither, I suspect, has Comcast.
