Putting the Cable-Modem Guys in the Big Picture

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CASTRO VALLEY, Calif. -- Forget Excite@Home(ATHM Quote) CEO Tom Jermoluk. Consider for a moment the life of Paul Thompson, an Excite@Home cable-modem installer working out of AT&T's (T Quote) office 15 miles southeast of Oakland. It's guys like him who will have a lot to do with the success of Excite@Home's high-speed ISP business.

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Wall Street mainly subscribes to the Big Man theory of history, obsessing over the machinations and moves of corporate chieftains. But when execution is paramount, a company's success hinges on the little guy. Nowhere is this more true than at Excite@Home, which can't sign up subscribers to its service fast enough. And that's where cable-modem guys enter the picture. The plumbers of the information age, they do the dirty work of hooking up the world's homes to the express lanes of the Internet.

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