The Internet for the couch potato@Home is a member of the new breed of Internet service providers that wants to bring high-speed Internet use to couch-potato level. @Home delivers Internet service via cable modems rather than traditional phone lines, which allows for speedier access (up to 300 times faster than dial-up connections) and improved overall service. Because it's faster, the Redwood City, CA-based firm can offer brighter colors, better graphics, and even short video clips on demand. @Home has also devised an innovative way to avoid bottlenecks on the Web. It maintains a "parallel" Internet backbone, called @Network, that duplicates popular sites. When an @Home user clicks a link to the heavily trafficked New York Times Online site, for example, she actually sees the replicated page on the @Home backbone. Each parallel site is updated about every 20 minutes, so there's no worry about missing the latest updates. @Home also offers a multimedia component with multiplayer games, local weather and traffic information, and content from more than 60 big-name providers, including Bloomberg, CNN, Discovery Channel online and SportsLine. The company isn't just serving couch potatoes, either - its @Work service offers cable-based Internet access, telecommuting and LAN services for small-to medium-sized business customers.
Ma Bell
The company was founded in 1995 by cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. TCI owns a 42 percent share of @Home, which went public in May 1997. As part of AT&T's acquisition of TCI (announced in 1998) the long-distance carrier will receive the cable company's majority stake in @Home. This gives AT&T a head-start in the cable/Internet world, and sets up the communications giant as a major contender in the new media business. Though @Home's subscribers are only in the six digits (about 330,000, compared to AOL's 14 million), AT&T is betting that this new alliance will put it @ the top of its burgeoning industry. Since it was founded, @Home has secured affiliate agreements with 19 cable companies around the world. That translates into exclusive rights, through 2002, to deliver its services to almost 60 million customers. Several lawsuits are pending across the nation to determine whether AT&T must allow other Internet companies to use their cables, and if so, on what terms.
@Home gets Excited
In January 1999, @Home announced that it would purchase leading internet portal Excite, in a $6.7 billion stock deal. (Other companies interested in acquiring the company included Microsoft and Yahoo!) The deal is the largest to date in a rash of Internet merger activity that began late in 1998, including America Online's $4.2 billion acquisition of Netscape that November. @Home benefits from Excite's successful portal site and personalization features, plus access to its 20 million+ registered users. The merged entity will deliver Excite's personalized interface through narrowband, broadband, and eventually, other display devices including televisions, pagers, and personal organizers. In addition, @Home and Excite will use Excite's MatchLogic technology, which gives advertisers a convenient way to target, measure and report online advertising.
Excite @Home agreed to acquire iMall for $415 million in July 1999. iMall facilitates online retailing for brick-and-mortar merchants. The acquistion will allow Excite @Home to offer merchants high-speed access to Excite's shopping section.
