Cox, Comcast to Temporarily Fund Excite Internet Service

A group of cable operators agreed Monday to pay bankrupt Excite@Home more than $320 million to keep its high-speed Internet service going for three more months, enough time to move all their customers off Excite’s network.

The deal wouldn’t apply to AT&T; Corp., whose talks with Excite broke down early Saturday, or Adelphia Communications Corp., which was cut off from the Excite@Home service Monday afternoon. Both companies began shifting customers to alternate high-speed Internet services that they own.

Instead, the bulk of the money came from Cox Communications and Comcast Corp., who each agreed to pay $160 million for three months of service instead of sharing the monthly fees they collect from consumers. Comcast had nearly 800,000 Excite@Home customers at the end of September, and Cox had 550,000.

Cox and Comcast own small stakes in Excite, while AT&T; owns a controlling interest. AT&T; had offered in September to pay $307 million for the insolvent company’s assets--an amount that creditors say was laughably low--but AT&T;’s shift to a new high-speed service leaves it little or no reason to pursue that bid.

Adelphia spokesman Lee Perrin said his company should be able to provide high-speed service on its own Powerlink network to 90% of its 38,000 Internet customers in Southern California by today. Service for the other 10%--all in Carlsbad--should be available by Thursday, Perrin said.

One challenge for Adelphia is getting customers connected to the new service, which involves changing some of the settings on each of their computers. Perrin said Adelphia planned to deliver software to ease the transition to each customer’s home today.

The negotiations with Cox, Comcast and other operators had begun even before Friday when a federal bankruptcy judge let Excite cancel “clearly burdensome” contracts with cable companies. Excite said the deals were costing the company up to $6 million a week.

Excite, whose Internet-access service had 3.7 million subscribers in North America, severed connections for more than 850,000 AT&T; Broadband customers Saturday after the two companies failed to reach an agreement.

By Monday, AT&T; said it had moved about 330,000 of those subscribers, mainly in Oregon, Washington and the Dallas area, to its own network and restored their Internet access.

Next in line were more than 300,000 customers in Illinois and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Customers in Denver and Salt Lake City are to be plugged into AT&T;’s new network Wednesday; and people in Hartford, Conn., Pittsburgh, Sacramento and Rocky Mountain cities on Thursday.

AT&T; asked customers to remain patient, saying its employees were “working literally around the clock.”

Once service is restored, AT&T; said, customers will get two free days of Internet access for every day they were down.