Cox moves @Home customers

Cox Communications, the last of the big three cable companies building their own high-speed Internet networks in the wake of Excite@Home's bankruptcy, has started moving customers to its new network.

The company said Monday it had begun moving customers in one area in December, and it's now changing over the rest of its 555,000 high-speed Excite@Home customers. Most of these subscribers should be on the network by the end of the month, the company said.

Cox, like Comcast, has agreed to support Excite@Home through the end of February in order to smooth the transition of its customers between networks. The cable company is spending $150 million to replicate the bankrupt high-speed Internet company's network.

"By creating our own network and managing it ourselves, we are in a better position to control the quality of and evolve our broadband services to meet the changing needs of our customers," Cox Chief Information Officer Scott Hatfield said.

Customers will be watching closely to see if the company can avoid the hiccups in service that marked similar moves by AT&T and Comcast, however.

AT&T was the first of the big cable companies to move its subscribers to a homegrown cable-modem network, prompting some grumbling about slow service and intermittent outages.

Comcast started moving people in late December, followed by widespread complaints of outages and a deluge of calls that overwhelmed the company's support lines.

Late last week, Comcast had said that most of its switchover issues had been solved, although some people will still have to upgrade their modems in order to connect reliably to the new network. Subscribers were still reporting service outages as late as Monday, however.