Cox Wins Deal to Plug In ‘Smart’ New Homes in O.C.
Launching one of the largest home telecommunications ventures in the region, Cox Communications Inc. said Monday it signed a $12-million deal with the developer of the Ladera Ranch community in south Orange County to provide the digital wiring needed to turn all 8,100 residences into the fantasy Jetson home.
The 40,000-acre Ladera Ranch near Mission Viejo is Orange County’s largest master-planned community to open in the past decade. Cox will lay the cables so that homeowners can get a vast array of information services, ranging from lightning-fast Internet access to video on demand.
Cox will offer residents local and long-distance telephone service, high-speed Internet access, cable television and access to a Ladera Ranch intranet, a computerized link that will let community residents digitally communicate with their neighbors.
“We won’t be offering consumers some of the services we’ve heard people request, but the [wiring] will be in place in the homes to allow such things,” said Kimberly Toonen, vice president of new business development for Cox in Orange County.
The service possibilities vary, said Diane Gaynor, a spokeswoman for Rancho Mission Viejo LLC, the developer of Ladera Ranch.
For the Internet-happy family, several PCs can be online--and networked--at once. Or a range of “smart” appliances could be connected together: burglar alarms set, coffee pots turned off before leaving for work, or nanny cams flipped on as the kids come home from school.
Getting such digital luxuries, however, comes with a hefty price tag. The homes will run from about $200,000 to more than $500,000. The first phase of nearly 1,000 homes will open to the public July 31; a number of stores and some office buildings will be incorporated into the neighborhoods.
The deal, in which Cox beat out an undisclosed number of competitors, gives the cable firm a near lock on new consumers in the community.
Ladera Ranch homeowners still can buy various high-tech services from other companies--including Cox rivals such as telephone carriers Pacific Bell and satellite broadcasters Hughes Electronics Corp.’s DirecTV.
But those charges would be tacked on to a $138.50 monthly fee that homeowners will be assessed for, among other things, parks, other recreational areas, landscaping maintenance and having the Cox network hooked into their homes.
As the boom economy sends home prices to record heights, consumers are demanding high-tech services in their new homes, real estate brokers say.
Spotting this emerging trend, telephone and cable companies have spent the past few years invading each other’s core business.
Until recently, most companies have focused on installing such high-speed networks in existing homes.
Cox began offering its “all-in-one” service--which includes telephone, Internet and cable service--in apartment complexes owned by Irvine Apartment Communities in 1997.
Such retrofitting, however, is expensive and complicated.
“How many people are going to pay several thousand dollars to retrofit their house just so they can change the thermostat from their couch?” asked Kevin Hause, a computer industry analyst with the research group International Data Corp. “I can see the appeal for new developments, however. It costs less, and there are a lot of emerging technologies that require the bandwidth.”
