 customer received a recorded phone call telling them what had happened and offering a two-day credit for every day the service was out. We knew that even if 850,000 customers without high-speed In- ternet service was not enough to catch the national media's attention, it would be Topic A in chat rooms and on many Web sites. Rather than endlessly trying to correct false information and empty specula- tion, we decided to lay out our plan to move all our former AtHome customers to our new network within two weeks and to give a daily tally of our progress. There was a certain degree of risk in this approach. AT&T was not yet a full-fledged member of the Internet crowd that gathered at such online hangouts as "slashdot.com." Worse, the company was the ob- ject of derision and suspicion. We also knew that the migration would hit many potholes. Moving a computer from one data network to an- other was not simply a matter of throwing a switch. IP addresses needed to be reset, Web browsers needed to be reconfigured, and op- erating systems needed to be updated. And every customer's com- puter was unique, involving different platforms with a different mix of applications. Nevertheless, we were convinced that the only way to win over customers (and the Web media) in the long run was to be completely honest and open with them. We did pretty well in that regard, although we were not perfect, and whenever I found out about a reporter whose call was not re- turned within thirty minutes, I would get in touch with him or her myself. I also assigned someone to monitor the Web chat rooms, pre- Stay Off the Treadmill of Expectations pared to answer questions or correct misinformation, but principally to develop a feeling for the temperature of the user community. We issued our first update the morning of Saturday, December I, to report that 86,000 high-speed data customers had been moved to AT&T's new network overnight. By Monday morning, more than 330,000 customers had been moved. By Tuesday, it was more than 500,000; by Wednesday 