Speedier Net Access Coming This Summer
The race to provide high-speed Internet access to Southern Californians promises to heat up this summer as companies start offering beefed-up services that allow users to connect to the Net at speeds many times faster than today’s dial-up modems.
Few Southland residents now have access to high-speed Internet access services at home--whether through a local cable operator, phone company or an independent provider.
But in the next few months, many cable companies will expand their cable modem offerings, while Pacific Bell broadens its digital subscriber line reach.
DSL and cable modems transmit at speeds from seven to 100 times faster than conventional dial-up modems.
Time Warner plans to launch its high-speed Internet access service, known as Road Runner, over the next three months in Orange County and the West San Fernando Valley. Time Warner subscribers in the South Bay and Canyon Country will be able to order the service in the fall.
MediaOne Group currently offers Road Runner in much of central Los Angeles and also in Marina del Rey and West Los Angeles. MediaOne owns a portion of the Road Runner service, along with Time Warner, Compaq Computer and Microsoft.
Cable operators and phone companies are racing to introduce broadband to cash in on the lucrative content possibilities these connections allow.
“The Internet is geared for people with slow connections,” with very little content designed to take advantage of high-speed connections, said Joe Laszlo, an analyst at Jupiter Communications, a New York-based market research firm. “So @Home and Road Runner have had to go out and put together packages of interesting content that add value to the service and make it worth spending an extra $25 a month over the basic price of a dial-up service,” he said.
Currently, cable modem users must lease equipment from their cable provider. Monthly fees are about $40, with installation fees of about $100. But retailers are expected to begin selling cable modems later this year, a move that is expected to lower the cost of the service for both the consumer and the cable operator, Laszlo said.
MediaOne Group, which is currently the subject of a bidding war between AT&T; and Comcast Corp., plans to offer Road Runner in Hollywood, West Hollywood, Lynwood, Tujunga, South-Central L.A., Maywood, Harbor, Lakewood, Corona, Tustin, Costa Mesa and Santa Clarita later this year.
Comcast owns Road Runner’s leading rival, @Home, in a joint venture with Tele-Communications Inc. and Cox Communications Inc. Comcast currently offers @Home service in Orange County. Cox offers the service in Orange County and to about 10% of the subscribers in its Palos Verdes service area. The firm will offer @Home to its remaining subscribers in Palos Verdes later this year.
TCI, which AT&T; bought recently, will be integrating its subscribers with Century Communications this year and plans to offer @Home in Santa Monica, Redondo Beach, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood this summer. Century is upgrading its plants and plans to be able to offer all its Southern California subscribers high-speed access within the next three years, said Bill Rosendahl, senior vice president of operations at Century.
Since last summer, GTE has offered DSL service to its Southern California customers.
Meanwhile, PacBell is experiencing high demand for its DSL service in North Hollywood, Beverly Hills and the Westside, said Robin MacGillivray, the company’s business customer solution centers vice president.
PacBell is rolling out DSL--which costs about $39 a month for the service, $49 a month for the service with Internet access and $198 for installation--throughout Southern California this year.
Because of technical complications with extending the service to consumers in an entire region, some neighborhood residents might have access to the service while others won’t, MacGillivray said. PacBell will launch a Web site in the next month that will allow consumers to punch in their ZIP Code to determine when their neighborhood will have DSL access.
“People appreciate the fact that getting on the Net and using the Net faster is almost becoming a requirement in their lives at work and at home,” she said.
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Times staff writer Jennifer Oldham can be reached at jennifer.oldham@latimes.com.
