Together the two companies will jointly market, provision and maintain high-speed, dedicated Internet access services via both AT&T and Excite@Home’s industry-leading IP backbones. This alliance will offer content providers optimized delivery to nearly three million Excite@Home broadband subscribers. For the first time customers will benefit from a single point of contact between the providers of two carrier-class networks. Services from this joint initiative are scheduled to be made generally available within the second quarter of 2001.
AT&T say content providers will benefit from the high availability via a managed multi-homing service, which delivers simultaneous connectivity to the backbones of both companies. They will also gain from the development of inter-backbone service level agreements including a 100% network availability performance objective for the multi-homed access services and the single point of customer contact for the provider’s content delivery needs.
With the increasing usage of rich media such as audio and video over the Internet, content providers are recognizing the importance of having resilient and scalable dedicated Internet access services. By simultaneously connecting to the high-speed IP backbones of both networks, content providers can deliver an optimized end-user experience.
This agreement establishes AT&T as a reseller of access to Excite@Home’s world-class broadband backbone. It is also expected that Excite@Home will serve as a lead referral to AT&T for large web hosting opportunities. For the new multi-homed offerings, AT&T will assume responsibility for customer care and account maintenance. Provisioning responsibilities will be shared by AT&T and Excite@Home.
