Cox Hustles In High-Speed Net Access Service

Cox Communications on Tuesday unveiled the first commercially available cable modem service in Southern California, offering high-speed Internet access to about 25,000 of the company’s subscribers in southern Orange County.

The service will cost more than twice as much as standard Internet access already offered by telephone companies and Internet service providers. But Cox officials promise that their subscribers will be able to download images, text and sound from the Internet at least 50 times faster than users of traditional modems.

Mark Stucky, a spokesman for Cox, said the company expects the service to catch on gradually, and that Cox hopes to have a few hundred cable modem subscribers sign up over the next few months.

But the company’s long-term ambitions are much greater. Like other cable companies that have introduced modem service elsewhere in the country, including Northern California, Cox is hoping to gain a foothold in the rapidly growing market for Internet access, e-mail and other electronic communications.

Other cable companies in Southern California, including Continental Cablevision, are considering offering the service in the next few years.

Analysts said there could be a large market for high-speed Internet access at premium prices, but that it is likely to develop slowly.

“The initial market will be savvy Internet users who want more bandwidth,” said Amar Senan, an analyst at Volpe, Welty & Co. in San Francisco. “For the mass market, I think it’s going to be a bit more challenging.”

Few cable networks around the country are equipped to offer high-speed Internet access alongside cable television service, Senan said. He added that there are also questions about ability of cable television companies, which often get low marks for customer service, to handle the installation, billing and other administrative functions required.

Stucky said that Cox has hired about eight installation specialists and that the company’s customer service department has been trained to help subscribers with cable modem problems. He added that the company’s partner in its modem venture, Home Network of Mountain View, would also provide technical support.

The cable modem service will cost $45 per month to Cox cable television subscribers, $55 per month to non-subscribers. That monthly charge includes the cost of the modem itself, which is manufactured by Motorola. There is also an installation fee that ranges from $100 to $175.

Internet accounts through telephone companies and other providers typically cost $20 per month or less.

The new service will initially be available in the southern area of Mission Viejo, said Stucky. Cox, like many other cable companies, is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar effort to upgrade its cable network.

The company, which has about 206,000 subscribers in South County, is installing high-speed fiber optic lines to “nodes” sprinkled around its subscription area. Each of those nodes can then be connected to as many as 1,000 homes through coaxial cables. Such networks are capable of carrying images, pictures and sound in greater volume and at higher speeds than typical telephone lines.

Cox’s upgrade project is about 80% complete, Stucky said, and the company plans to make cable modem service available to its entire Orange County customer base by the end of 1997. The company also plans to begin offering local telephone service through its cable network.

Cox, based in Atlanta, has about 3.2 million cable television subscribers nationwide. The company selected Orange County for its first roll-out of cable modem service largely because of the region’s demographics.

“This obviously is a high-tech kind of area,” Stucky said.