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As Excite@Home prepares to step out of the exclusive contract waters onto competitive dry land, it will have to evolve. But transforming monopolistic fins into competitive feet isn't necessarily bad, according to one top executive.
Steve Brookstein, general manager for Excite@Home, says the cable-based high-speed Internet service never had any illusions about what would happen after the contracts with its cable operators expired. And it already is preparing for a world where multiple ISPs will hop onto the cable pipe.
"We're totally comfortable and look forward to open access," he says. "We have clarification from our MSO partners as to what role we'll play in that open access arena. It remains to be seen exactly what terms, but at the minimum it will be a level playing field for sure."
It won't start from scratch. With approximately 2.9 million subscribers now, Brookstein expects Excite@Home will have a healthy subscriber base when competitors arrive on the scene. It will also remain as the platform provider under extension agreements forged with Comcast Cable Communications, Cox Communications Inc. and AT&T Broadband-although much of that relationship is still nebulous, Brookstein says.
"We are in total uncharted waters in terms of even what it means to provide a high-speed broadband Internet service," he says. "There are a lot of engineering issues that have never been addressed before."
Competition also won't come at the flip of a switch. Excite@Home's MSO partners and associated cable operations will remain under contracts with varying expiration dates in 2002. "So it's a rolling change, if you will," Brookstein says. "For all intents and purposes we look to a world in mid 2002 that will very much be in an open access environment."
In that environment, Excite@Home can bank on customer base and network infrastructure to expand its business. "Open access frankly opens up other business opportunities for us primarily in the entire wholesale arena," Brookstein says. "When you look at the totality of not only our network infrastructure which goes to backbone and regional transport, the application layers of e-mail, provisioning etc., we think that will be a robust business in working with other ISPs to help enable them to go to market in an open access arena."
Although Brookstein is quick to emphasize Excite@Home will for now stick close to its cable roots, digital subscriber line technology could creep into the picture. The service already has dabbled in DSL as part of its Excite@Work enterprise offerings.
"Our DSL plans today are such that we would never go into where we have a cable footprint," Brookstein emphasizes. "We would never overbuild if you will, our current partners. We would only go to where we have no distribution. How that may change in open access is a good question that we haven't resolved."
"We are platform agnostic," he adds. "What we are talking about is the last mile. So whether it is cable, which we think is a superior technology...but we could do DSL, we could do fixed wireless, we could do satellite."
"A lot's going to depend on, I think, the business terms that are established in the open access arena-you know, the terms that the cable operators are able to come to versus what a DSL provider might come to terms. So a lot depends on the underlying business."
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