Cable broadband customers in regulatory limbo
The millions of cable Internet customers whose connections are vulnerable because of At Home Corp.'s bankruptcy proceedings are not protected by government regulations, reports The Washington Post. AT&T Broadband, which had its cable Internet services provided by At Home, shut off 850,000 customers over the weekend. Two other cable companies using At Home as a provider -- including Comcast Cable Communications and Cox Communications -- have signed a deal to continue the service until alternatives can be found or created. If Comcast or Cox had followed AT&T Broadband's decision to abruptly drop cable modem service, customers would've had little recourse. Scott Cleland, chief executive of financial research company Precursor Group Inc., told the Post: "Cable modem is in never-never land. Telecommunications is viewed as a utility that must work, like your power, your gas, your water. It's treated as a necessity. But cable modem is treated as an entertainment device."
AT&T Broadband, which is the subject of a bidding war between Comcast, Cox and others, began restoring cable Internet service to some customers through its own internal network on Monday. At its peak, At Home provided cable modem service to more than 3.5 million users.
Analysts: At Home meltdown bad for business
People considering high-speed Internet access could put off buying such service because of At Home Corp.'s troubles, industry watchers said Monday. Mike Paxton, a broadband analyst for the Cahners In-Stat firm in Scottsdale, Ariz., said the industry has been trying to package cable, Net access and voice services to attract more customers. The At Home problems have removed a "leg" from that tripod, he said. "Long-term, the industry's biggest concern is those people who'd been thinking about switching to broadband from dial-up (modems)," Paxton told United Press International. "Potential customers are certainly going to have second thoughts about whether they want to make that switch."
Microsoft privacy effort raises concerns
Internet privacy advocates say Microsoft is stirring up potential trouble with its effort to get Web sites to adopt a privacy standard that comes with the new version of the company's Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has built one form of Platform of Privacy Preferences, or P3P, into IE 6.0 with the hopes that it would become common on the Web. But Web privacy experts told USA Today that the software is causing headaches because 79 of the top 100 Web sites do not use the "compact" form of P3P that is built into IE 6.0. Microsoft's version of P3P deals only with how Web sites use cookies, the small files that sites store on a user's computer as a way of identifying visitors, monitoring traffic, posting ads and conducting sales. In its current form, Microsoft's P3P alerts users when it blocks a cookie, but doesn't report why, meaning that cookies could be blocked from Web sites that have excellent privacy policies. The experts also told USA Today that Microsoft's P3P also creates glitches on Web sites by putting red X's over legitimate third-party ads that use cookies.
MusicNet service set to go live
The first of the online subscription music services backed by major music labels, MusicNet, was expected to launch on Tuesday. Backed by Warner, EMI and Bertelsmann and provided through RealNetworks' RealOne service, MusicNet will allow subscribers to pay $9.95 a month to download up to 100 songs from a selection of 75,000 tracks. Listen.com also launched its own subscription-based service, Rhapsody, on Monday. MusicNet's chief competition, the Pressplay service backed by Universal and Sony, is expected to launch within months.
Winter Olympics tech guru not worried
The man responsible for coordinating the security of the 2002 Winter Olympics' computer system says he's not intimidated by the massive job in front of him. Matt McClung of Salt Lake City security firm Satel told Wired News that the Olympic computer system, comprised of 4,500 PCs and 550 servers, is the most complex network he's ever seen. But, without going into specifics, he said the system would be protected by standard technology such as firewalls and a virus protection application. Some experts echoed McClung's confidence about protecting the Olympic network from intruders. Richard Smith, an independent public safety and security consultant, told Wired News: "Given the complexity of the computer system, I would personally be much more concerned with software and hardware reliability problems and less about hackers." There were no major hack-attacks reported at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, but experts say the Salt Lake City network could be a prime target for anyone -- terrorists or otherwise -- looking to make a statement.
Tech biz unlikely to see spending boost
Polls conducted by major investment banks have found that spending on information technology by U.S. firms will remain muted next year, another slice of bad news for an industry expecting a little bounce. A survey by Goldman Sachs, reported in the Financial Times, found that 55 percent of IT managers expect their spending to be flat or decrease in 2002. Many companies went on IT spending binges over the last few years, and are expecting to try to get more out of those investments instead of buying newer computers, software upgrades and other info-tech gear.
(Compiled by Joe Warminsky in Washington.)
