If you were on Excite@home, you are now probably switched over to Comcast@home.
Excite had a news server. Comcast doesn't think you need a news server.
They bent you over.
Try
Easynews. By far the best news server out there. $10 a month. If you are into Usenet, this is an excellent deal.
<edit> Forgot to mention Easynews has a free 3 day trial, so you can see what you think. I like their Zipmanager, you can select 100 files, it will zip them all up and download them to you at once. No more decoding and combining. </edit>