@Home Network
Encyclopedia
@Home Network was a high-speed cable
Internet service provider
from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies TCI
, Comcast
, and Cox Communications
, and William Randolph Hearst III
, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through two-way television cable infrastructure.
At the company's peak it provided high speed Internet service for 4.1 million subscribers in the U.S., Canada
, Japan
, Australia
, and Benelux
, operating four joint ventures, three of which were international.
Today, the present version of the company is called Excite
.
enabled cable companies to start to offer Internet telephony
services to customers.
The company's first VP of Engineering and later Chief Technology Officer Milo Medin, the company got its start from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In December 1998, Excite
was in merger negotiations with Yahoo!
inc in an agreement to purchase the Excite portal for a price between $5.5 billion and $6 billion. On December 19, at Kleiner Perkins prompting, @Home Network's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s Chairman and CEO George Bell
, according to documents filed with the SEC, and a deal was hashed out for the purchase of Excite and its debt.
On January 19, 1999, @Home Networks acquired the Internet portal Excite. The $6.7 billion merger became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies ever; the combined entity would marry the profitable high speed Internet network of @Home and expand its existing Home.com portal with Excite’s search engine and Internet portal. The combined entity's external name became Excite@Home, however the stock symbol and regulatory filing records remained properly known as At Home Corporation (ATHM).
As a side effect of the deal, @Home’s Chairman and Chief Executive George Tom Jermoluk (also called T.J. for short) stepped down as Chief Executive Officer, but remained Chairman of the board, and Excite’s former Chairman and Chief Executive George Bell who was the President of the Excite division of @Home, moved over as Chief Executive of the new Excite@Home entity.
The new Excite division took the existing @home.com web portal that was provided to subscribers of the service and merged it with the Excite portal. Along with this was the movement toward personalized web portal content, a concept now commonplace in all Internet portals today.
In just months following the merger, Excite@Home's Excite division purchased iMall for about $425 million in stock. Most significant of these was the purchase of the online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts, Excite@Home issued 11.2 million shares, worth close to $430 million, and paid $350 million in cash. In addition Excite paid for sponsorship of Infiniti
IndyCar driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 Indy racing seasons for an undisclosed amount.
On June 10, 1999 the @Home cable division announced a joint venture with Australia with Cable & Wireless Optus
to form a new company, AtHome Network Australia. The projected homes past for the deal was 2.2 million.
The merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. The stock which once soared at $128.34 a share in the first quarter of 1999 and had a market cap of $35 billion had fallen to $1 a share by the third quarter of 2001 when the company formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The new Chief Executive George Bell worked from his home in Massachusetts
and the Chief Financial Officer Mark McEachen lived in LA
, flying in only once per week to the Bay Area to conduct business. Both executives were part of the former Excite executive team. More significantly, expenses ran far ahead of revenues. The burst of the dot-com bubble
in March 2000 and the subsequent collapse of the Internet advertising market further limited the company's prospects by making it harder to raise investor money to keep the company afloat in the absence of retained earnings. By 2001, the company was running out of cash.
On September 21, 2000, George Bell stepped down as Chief Executive Officer and reprised his role as President of the Excite division. The stock was trading at $15.38 a share, a drop of 90% of the company's evaluation during his leadership. On April 23, 2001, Patti S. Hart, the former Chief Executive Officer of Telocity joined Excite@Home as its third CEO and @Home's fourth. In the same announcement, the outgoing chairman George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The news was not good as the company also reported a first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, or 15 cents per share, on revenue of $142.8 million compared with a loss of $4.6 million, or 1 cent, on revenue of $138 million in the same period the prior year.
On June 11, 2001, Excite@home announced what it had raised $100 million in fresh financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal not widely disclosed was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq
. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. The key aspect of the deal was that Promethean gained first dibs on Excite's assets.
By August 20, 2001, @Home fired their auditor firm Ernst & Young
, replacing them with PricewaterhouseCoopers
. In addition, they received a demand for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt by bondholders Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. At the same time, both Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would separate from the broadband Internet service by Q1 of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts for $35 million to American Greetings
, less than 5% of what they had paid less than two years earlier.
On October 1, 2001, the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The company's remaining 1,350 employees would be laid off over the following months into the first quarter of 2002. As part of the agreement @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T for $307 million in cash. At Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
After the company's demise, the four Excite@Home headquarters buildings at 450 Broadway Street in Redwood City, California
, were purchased by Stanford University Medical Center,
greatly remodeled, and reopened as the new home of the Stanford Medicine Outpatient Clinics in 2009. The shells were largely preserved, but the interiors are completely new, providing facilities that had been unavailable in the Palo Alto
location. The buildings, plainly labeled Stanford Medicine, are easily visible from the freeway, U.S. 101, where the buildings labeled Excite@Home had previously been.
which was essentially an @Home re-branded version of Internet Explorer
with Excite@Home enabled features built within the browser. Additionally, besides the web browser users could also download the Excite@Home powered Instant Messenger, and @Home Assistant desktop widget, which had features like Excite's Search, current news, e-mail notification, and "TuneIn" online radio among other tools at hand.
In total Excite@Home offered services to a total of 16 affiliates across the United States and Canada. This included: Cablevision Systems, Century Communications, Charter Communications
, Cogeco Cable, Comcast, Cox Communications, Garden State Cable, Insight Communications
, InterMedia Partners
, Jones Intercable, Midcontinent Cable, Prime Cable, Rogers Cablesystems, Shaw Communications, Suburban, and Videon CableSystems with access to over 60 million households.
) got full ownership of @Home Benelux BV, and the company was called Essent Kabelcom. In February 2007 Essent sold Essent Kabelcom to private equity firms Warburg Pincus
and Cinven
, and the company was once again called @Home (now without the 'Benelux'-part). On May 16, 2008, @Home merged with cable providers Casema and Multikabel into Ziggo
, thus becoming the largest cable provider of The Netherlands.
Cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...
Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies TCI
Tele-Communications Inc.
Tele-Communications, Inc. or TCI was a cable television provider in the United States, for much of its history controlled by Bob Magness and John Malone....
, Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, and Cox Communications
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
, and William Randolph Hearst III
William Randolph Hearst III
William Randolph Hearst III became president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in early 2003. Son of William Randolph Hearst, Jr...
, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through two-way television cable infrastructure.
At the company's peak it provided high speed Internet service for 4.1 million subscribers in the U.S., Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, and Benelux
Benelux
The Benelux is an economic union in Western Europe comprising three neighbouring countries, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. These countries are located in northwestern Europe between France and Germany...
, operating four joint ventures, three of which were international.
Today, the present version of the company is called Excite
Excite
Excite is a collection of Internet sites and services owned by IAC Search & Media, which is a subsidiary of InterActive Corporation . Launched in 1994, it is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal, a search engine, a web-based email, instant messaging, stock...
.
Chief executive officers
- William Randolph Hearst IIIWilliam Randolph Hearst IIIWilliam Randolph Hearst III became president of the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in early 2003. Son of William Randolph Hearst, Jr...
1996–1997 - Thomas Jermoluk 1997–2000
- George BellGeorge BellGeorge Bell may refer to:*George Joseph Bell , Scottish jurist*George Bell , British publisher, founder of George Bell & Sons*George Bell , American Civil War sailor and Medal of Honor recipient...
2000 - Patti S. Hart 2001–2002
History
The Passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996Telecommunications Act of 1996
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934. This Act, signed by President Bill Clinton, was a major stepping stone towards the future of telecommunications, since this was the...
enabled cable companies to start to offer Internet telephony
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...
services to customers.
The company's first VP of Engineering and later Chief Technology Officer Milo Medin, the company got its start from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
In December 1998, Excite
Excite
Excite is a collection of Internet sites and services owned by IAC Search & Media, which is a subsidiary of InterActive Corporation . Launched in 1994, it is an online service offering a variety of content, including an Internet portal, a search engine, a web-based email, instant messaging, stock...
was in merger negotiations with Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
inc in an agreement to purchase the Excite portal for a price between $5.5 billion and $6 billion. On December 19, at Kleiner Perkins prompting, @Home Network's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
Thomas Jermoluk met with Excite’s Chairman and CEO George Bell
George Bell
George Bell may refer to:*George Joseph Bell , Scottish jurist*George Bell , British publisher, founder of George Bell & Sons*George Bell , American Civil War sailor and Medal of Honor recipient...
, according to documents filed with the SEC, and a deal was hashed out for the purchase of Excite and its debt.
On January 19, 1999, @Home Networks acquired the Internet portal Excite. The $6.7 billion merger became one of the largest mergers of two Internet companies ever; the combined entity would marry the profitable high speed Internet network of @Home and expand its existing Home.com portal with Excite’s search engine and Internet portal. The combined entity's external name became Excite@Home, however the stock symbol and regulatory filing records remained properly known as At Home Corporation (ATHM).
As a side effect of the deal, @Home’s Chairman and Chief Executive George Tom Jermoluk (also called T.J. for short) stepped down as Chief Executive Officer, but remained Chairman of the board, and Excite’s former Chairman and Chief Executive George Bell who was the President of the Excite division of @Home, moved over as Chief Executive of the new Excite@Home entity.
The new Excite division took the existing @home.com web portal that was provided to subscribers of the service and merged it with the Excite portal. Along with this was the movement toward personalized web portal content, a concept now commonplace in all Internet portals today.
In just months following the merger, Excite@Home's Excite division purchased iMall for about $425 million in stock. Most significant of these was the purchase of the online greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts, Excite@Home issued 11.2 million shares, worth close to $430 million, and paid $350 million in cash. In addition Excite paid for sponsorship of Infiniti
Infiniti
is the luxury division of automaker Nissan. Infiniti officially started selling vehicles on November 8, 1989 in North America. Marketing operations have since grown to include the Middle East, South Korea, Russia, Taiwan, China, Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Infiniti began sales in additional...
IndyCar driver Eddie Cheever, Jr., through the 2000 and 2001 Indy racing seasons for an undisclosed amount.
On June 10, 1999 the @Home cable division announced a joint venture with Australia with Cable & Wireless Optus
Optus
SingTel Optus Pty Limited is the second largest telecommunications company in Australia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications...
to form a new company, AtHome Network Australia. The projected homes past for the deal was 2.2 million.
The merger between Excite and @Home fell disastrously short of expectations. The stock which once soared at $128.34 a share in the first quarter of 1999 and had a market cap of $35 billion had fallen to $1 a share by the third quarter of 2001 when the company formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The new Chief Executive George Bell worked from his home in Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
and the Chief Financial Officer Mark McEachen lived in LA
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, flying in only once per week to the Bay Area to conduct business. Both executives were part of the former Excite executive team. More significantly, expenses ran far ahead of revenues. The burst of the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
in March 2000 and the subsequent collapse of the Internet advertising market further limited the company's prospects by making it harder to raise investor money to keep the company afloat in the absence of retained earnings. By 2001, the company was running out of cash.
On September 21, 2000, George Bell stepped down as Chief Executive Officer and reprised his role as President of the Excite division. The stock was trading at $15.38 a share, a drop of 90% of the company's evaluation during his leadership. On April 23, 2001, Patti S. Hart, the former Chief Executive Officer of Telocity joined Excite@Home as its third CEO and @Home's fourth. In the same announcement, the outgoing chairman George Bell resigned and left the company completely. The news was not good as the company also reported a first-quarter net loss of $61.6 million, or 15 cents per share, on revenue of $142.8 million compared with a loss of $4.6 million, or 1 cent, on revenue of $138 million in the same period the prior year.
On June 11, 2001, Excite@home announced what it had raised $100 million in fresh financing from Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. Part of the deal not widely disclosed was that the loan was repayable immediately if Excite@Home stock was delisted by Nasdaq
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
. The loan, structured as a note convertible into shares of Excite, had an interest rate of zero. The key aspect of the deal was that Promethean gained first dibs on Excite's assets.
By August 20, 2001, @Home fired their auditor firm Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young
Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms, along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers ....
, replacing them with PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers
PricewaterhouseCoopers is a global professional services firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest professional services firm measured by revenues and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms....
. In addition, they received a demand for the immediate repayment of $50 million in debt by bondholders Promethean Capital Management and Angelo Gordon & Co. At the same time, both Cox Cable and Comcast announced that they would separate from the broadband Internet service by Q1 of 2002.
On September 13, 2001, Excite@Home sold Blue Mountain Arts for $35 million to American Greetings
American Greetings
American Greetings Corporation, Inc. is the world's largest publicly-traded greeting card company. It is based in Brooklyn, Ohio and sells paper greeting cards, electronic greeting cards, party products , and electronic expressive content...
, less than 5% of what they had paid less than two years earlier.
On October 1, 2001, the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. The company's remaining 1,350 employees would be laid off over the following months into the first quarter of 2002. As part of the agreement @Home's national high-speed fiber network access would be sold back to AT&T for $307 million in cash. At Home Liquidating Trust became the successor company to Excite@Home charged with the sale of all assets of the former company.
After the company's demise, the four Excite@Home headquarters buildings at 450 Broadway Street in Redwood City, California
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a California charter city located on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California, approximately 27 miles south of San Francisco, and 24 miles north of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans from its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people, to its tradition as a port for...
, were purchased by Stanford University Medical Center,
greatly remodeled, and reopened as the new home of the Stanford Medicine Outpatient Clinics in 2009. The shells were largely preserved, but the interiors are completely new, providing facilities that had been unavailable in the Palo Alto
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
location. The buildings, plainly labeled Stanford Medicine, are easily visible from the freeway, U.S. 101, where the buildings labeled Excite@Home had previously been.
Features
Features of the @Home network were fairly standardized from cable provider to cable provider. All users of the service were granted email addresses which were (username)@home.net. Users were also given a special content-rich start-page on the Internet at http://home.excite.com/ which was specifically created for broadband speeds at a time when very few websites on the Internet were geared towards broadband users. Users were also granted access to other Excite websites such as Blue Mountain and their greeting-card by email service. Also as part of the @Home experience, users were provided with a special Excite@Home web browserWeb browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
which was essentially an @Home re-branded version of Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
with Excite@Home enabled features built within the browser. Additionally, besides the web browser users could also download the Excite@Home powered Instant Messenger, and @Home Assistant desktop widget, which had features like Excite's Search, current news, e-mail notification, and "TuneIn" online radio among other tools at hand.
Cobranded @Home services
- AT&T@Home (formerly TCI@Home before the purchase of TCI by AT&T)
- Charter@Home
- Cogeco@Home
- Comcast@Home
- Cox@Home
- Optimum@Home
- Intermedia@Home
- Rogers@Home
- Shaw@Home
- Optus@Home
- Videon@Home
In total Excite@Home offered services to a total of 16 affiliates across the United States and Canada. This included: Cablevision Systems, Century Communications, Charter Communications
Charter Communications
Charter Communications is an American company providing cable television, high-speed Internet, and telephone services to more than 4.7 million customers in 25 states. By revenues, it is the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, behind Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Cox Communications...
, Cogeco Cable, Comcast, Cox Communications, Garden State Cable, Insight Communications
Insight Communications
Insight Communications is the 13th largest multiple system operator in the United States with approximately 692,000 customers in the three contiguous states of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio...
, InterMedia Partners
InterMedia Partners
InterMedia Advisors, LLC, also known as InterMedia Advisors is a private equity investment firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in the media sector....
, Jones Intercable, Midcontinent Cable, Prime Cable, Rogers Cablesystems, Shaw Communications, Suburban, and Videon CableSystems with access to over 60 million households.
@Home Benelux BV
In 1999, @Home Network founded @Home Benelux BV, together with Intel Corporation and the (former) Dutch companies EDON NV en Palet Kabelcom B.V. @Home Benelux BV was based in Amsterdam. Later, N.V. Energie-Distributiebedrijf Oost- en Noord-Nederland (EDON) (then called EssentEssent
Essent NV, based in Arnhem, The Netherlands, is an energy company. It is a public limited liability corporation. Essent is one of the largest players on the energy market in its chief market the Netherlands, and also operates in Belgium...
) got full ownership of @Home Benelux BV, and the company was called Essent Kabelcom. In February 2007 Essent sold Essent Kabelcom to private equity firms Warburg Pincus
Warburg Pincus
Warburg Pincus, LLC is an American private equity firm with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil and Asia. It has been a private equity investor since 1966...
and Cinven
Cinven
Cinven is a British private equity firm founded in 1977 with offices in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan and Hong Kong. Currently, the company has raised four funds, with the last one signing up €6.5 billion...
, and the company was once again called @Home (now without the 'Benelux'-part). On May 16, 2008, @Home merged with cable providers Casema and Multikabel into Ziggo
Ziggo
Ziggo is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing cable television , broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers....
, thus becoming the largest cable provider of The Netherlands.
Joint ventures
- Cable & Wireless Optus
- ChelloChellochello is the brand of internet service provider-activities of Liberty Global Europe , a provider of broadband internet access via cable in Europe, with estimated 1.3 million customers across its markets. LGE operates in 15 European, 4 Latin American and 2 Asian/Pacific countries...
- Excite Chello
- @Work
- @Home Solutions