their system to other ISPs, but it certainly frees up Cox and Comcast to do it sooner than they otherwise were saying. It can and should happen this year," says EarthLink VP of law and public policy Dave Baker.
That might not be as easy as it sounds. Unlike telephone networks, which provide direct lines to subscribers, cable networks are shared by subscribers and terminate in one box, says David Eiswert, director of the broadband group at The Strategis Group. "It's very complicated to break those channels out to multiple ISPs. It's not possible from a technical, practical standpoint" to expect that to happen before a year or two, he says.
When the companies finally open up their cable networks to other ISPs, ExciteAtHome would be able to serve as a wholesale carrier to them because it already has its high-bandwidth connections into the network, says Harris.
AT&T's cable modem subscriber base is growing faster than Time Warner's, at an 82 percent rate versus Time Warner's 30 percent, according to a report by Kinetic Strategies. At the end of last year, Time Warner had 320,000 subscribers, MediaOne had 220,000, AT&T had 207,000, Cox had 186,918 and Comcast had 141,900.
There were 1.8 million high-speed subscribers in the U.S. at the end of 1999 and 1.6 million were cable-based, said George Bell, ExciteAtHome president and CEO. Of those, 1.1 million subscribed with ExciteAtHome and 550,000 with Road Runner.
AT&T is still waiting for regulatory approval for the purchase of cable company MediaOne Group (UMG), whose broadband Internet access company, Road Runner, is jointly owned with Time Warner.
One day after the announcement, ExciteAtHome's stock was down $4.50, to $33.18, while AT&T's was down $2.43, to $57. ExciteAtHome's stock price has tumbled from more than $90 last April.
The agreements have been approved by a unanimous vote of ExciteAtHome's board members but still require shareholder approval. The transactions are expected to be completed by the third quarter of this year.
