actually, this isn't quite true. while the excite@home is the parent company of the @home network, that does not mean that when excite@home goes down that all of at&t's network will go down. they have been planning for this in the event that they were not able to buy excite's network, which now seems to be a likely situation. so while they have been trying to buy @home, and sell their cable, they have also been building their own network. this is no guarantee that the service will not go down, but they claim they have some areas ready for their new service.