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.

@Home cable-modem installer Paul Thompson arrives at a house in Castro Valley, Calif.
Photo: Spencer Ante

Thanks to newly hired guys like Thompson, Excite@Home is beginning to gain some momentum in its attempt to become the king of broadband connectivity. In the most recent fiscal quarter, Excite@Home signed up 220,000 new cable-modem customers, beating analysts' estimates.

Wearing a short-sleeved blue work shirt, jeans and a pair of Nike cross-trainers, the 30-year-old Thompson jumps into his GMC Safari van and heads out to Castro Valley. He's not too worried about this job because it's in a new housing development, which means that he probably won't have to rewire the house.

Arriving at a prefab condo, Thompson is greeted by homeowner Robert Bjork. A retired attorney, Bjork was planning to have Pacific Bell install a high-speed digital subscriber line, or DSL, in his home. But that was before he read a promotional flyer from TCI@Home offering a free installation and a month of free service.

Thompson tags the cable-modem wire so future repairmen will leave it alone.
Photo: Spencer Ante

Thompson goes to work, splitting the cable wire into a video and data line, then installing the cable-modem software on Bjork's computer. After hooking up the modem, Thompson configures an email account. Finally, after the modem is up and running, he demos the service for Bjork. The whole process, which usually lasts two hours, took 90 minutes.

"This was less painful than I thought," Bjork tells Thompson after the job is completed.

Horror Stories

Of course, cable-modem guys have their share of horror stories. They like to dish about the guy who discovered a dead body while crawling underneath a woman's house. And the occasional case of mild electrocution elicits a round of laughter.

But Thompson and others enjoy the unpredictable nature of the job. It's a big part of what makes it interesting. Other cable-modem guys say they're attracted to the challenge and excitement of working with cutting-edge computer technology.

With the modem installed after an hour and a half, Thompson heads to the next job.
Photo: Spencer Ante

That's what lured Thompson, who developed his computer instinct after his dad bought him an Apple (AAPL Quote) clone when he was 9. When he was a biology major at Chico State, Thompson ran a bulletin board devoted to fishing. Today, he has four computers at home on a local area network. Before he became a cable-modem guy, Thompson was working as a pest detection specialist for the Alameda County Department of Agriculture. "The job wasn't going anywhere," he says.

Other cable-modem guys come from equally varied backgrounds. The Tri-Valley office has a former Federal Express delivery guy, another fellow who worked in a computer-chip clean room and another who used to run his own tree-trimming service.

Take Trent Walbridge, Thompson's 29-year-old co-worker. Walbridge used to forecast weather for a naval air weapons center in southern California. One of the senior installers in the office, he enjoys not being tied to a desk.

"There are completely different people you meet, from the biggest [jerk] to the nicest grandma in the world," says Walbridge. "But the main thing is to have fun. If we leave and the customer has a smile on his face, we've done a good job."