I had a bit of a panic Saturday morning when my cable modem was down. I thought to myself: “those bastards at Excite @home and their creditors!” That afternoon service came back on and I felt a swell of relief. I must admit, I’m a cable modem junky. For those few hours when I thought my service was sunk, I thought about how much I would be willing to pay for DSL–which is newly available in my area for a reasonable price. Later I found out that AT&T’s cable customers got screwed as Excite pulled the plug on them, mostly because AT&T has been assholes about it. In fact, the saga of AT&T is amazing, going from the largest company in the world in 1980, still remaining strong after being broken up, then screwing it all up in the 90s. All mostly due to corporate arrogance and lack of direction, I reckon. And here in Champaign-Urbana we just narrowly escaped disaster. AT&T used to be our cable company (our 3rd in five years) but then sold to Insight, a small regional company. Unlike AT&T, Insight is having “positive negotiations” with @Home.
But it still sucks being dependent on these stupid and self-destructive corporations. Please explain to me how AT&T or @Home runs their affairs any better than the federal goverment, as the right-wing laissez-faire corporatists would have you believe. (and don’t even get me started on Enron… $31.2 billion in debt that it can’t repay?)
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