Goodbye, AT&T WorldNet. Hello, Comcast.net.
That’s what many former AT&T Broadband customers were saying Monday as
Comcast Corp. starts the process of transitioning them over to its own
high-speed Internet service.
Starting Monday, customers in the former AT&T Broadband territories who
have used the AT&T WorldNet Internet-service provider and have @attbi.com
electronic-mail addresses can move over to Comcast’s ISP service and hook up
their @comcast.net addresses.
For weeks, customers have been receiving repeated reminders from Comcast to
download the necessary software installer, which became active at 6 a.m. EST
Monday. Customers who had downloaded the software wizard were directed to the
new Comcast site and taken through the necessary steps to set up their new
e-mail accounts.
"It’s going as we expected, and we are pleased so far," Comcast spokeswoman
Sarah Eder said. That includes the higher-than-usual call volume, "and most of
those questions circle around passwords," she added
"I would say we have longer hold times than we typically have because the
volume is up, but we anticipated that and are fully staffed for it today," she
said.
A high percentage of the attbi.com customers have downloaded the software,
and there has been a good volume of users making the transition today, Eder
said.
"Any customers that haven’t changed their settings yet, we want them to do
that as soon as possible so they can take advantage," she added.
Unlike the last service migration, when the now defunct Excite@Home Corp.
service was cut off in December 2001, the former AT&T Broadband customers
will have access to their @attbi e-mails for some time. Those addresses will be
active through the end of 2004.
