Please don't cut off my COX!
I am a heavy user of cox@home. I work from home and rely on it for almost continously. I have had it 2.2 years in RI and so far so good. I have had dinner with a VP from Cox a few months ago. Everyone knew @home was going under. Cox never was crazy with @home set up but Cox did not have the networking systems and people to support a buildout. Cox was laying fiber in the ground not worring about webpage and email junk. For the last year they have been taking over more and more of the duties of @home, I know for a fact that buy June of 01 they had planded to be free of @home and have everything inhouse. They have accelerated the sched but it will still be a couple months before they can do everthing @home was doing. I expect that there might be a minor intrup here and ther but I doubt you loose everthing for very long. I know they are trying to buy time and they should have no problem doing this.
You all know the reasons(from what I heard).......Bondholders don't like it when the price of a company's stock X the number of outstanding shares drops below the amount of the cash that was loaned to them. (They were hoping to get their money back and just saw the company become worth less then what they are owed.) So they sued and said they think the company should auction off all the assets, but only ATT bid....not much of an auction...The bondholders want COX and COMCAST and maybe someone else to pony up some cash or they will pull the plug on customers (ATT already owns 42% of @home) and offered 307 mill for the rest. (The bondholders put up about 770 mil in 1998 to @home and they plan to squeeeeze the other cable compaines to get more cash.
What will I think will happen?..... Cox is strong, and will work a temp deal with the bondholders to keep things going until they get there own system up. Bondholders just want cash and cox has enought to buy some time. I know cox never liked @home but I never seemed to have a problem with them.
My biggest worry is switching 500K COX customers to a new and rushed-to-compleation network. You know there is going to be a few problems. Cox has a very solid infastructure and will be fine. It is the best deal out there for broadband hands down IMO.
I am glad I am not the sys admin at COX this weekend.
John...you want a local job?...I bet they are paying TOP dollar for a few good men!
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