g to reprogram the security codes in the AT&T nodes of the AtHome network to make it more difficult to restore service if it went down. Neither Cox nor Comcast reported similar problems, SO AT&T knew that it would be the likely target if the creditors won permission to begin shutting the service down. AT&T's lawyers on both coasts, its bankers negotiating with the creditors, the engineers at its labs in California and Denver, and Arm- strong's senior team in New Jersey were on a conference call through Tough Calls most of the day and night. When the bankruptcy court judge finally ruled that AtHome could void its cable contracts because they were unprofitable, most commentators believed that he had significantly improved its bargaining position. The cable companies would have no alternative but to accept new terms in order to continue service. To do otherwise would be to commit mutual suicide. AtHome immediately began refusing to accept technical support calls from AT&T customers. It also started to pull down network diag- nostic tools, and at midnight West Coast time, it shut off the portion of its network serving 850,000 AT&T customers, disabling their e-mail and leaving them with error messages on their computer screens. But AtHome's creditors had miscalculated. To the surprise of many inside the industry, AT&T quickly knitted its own data centers, network operations centers, and cable lines into a network that could substitute for AtHome's systems, restoring service to all 850,000 cus- tomers in less than one week. Conspiracies Can't Grow in Full Sunlight The mainstream national media took relatively little notice of the pos- sibility that the AtHome service might be shut down, perhaps assum- ing that it was all corporate posturing, with no more at stake than in professional wrestling. The online media, on the other hand, were abuzz with the latest rumors and conspiracy theories. We made a con- scious decision not to engage in sword rattling, even though, behind the scenes, we made no secret of our progress in