Adelphia Says City Slowing Its Broadband Roll-Out
Despite a boost from federal regulators, the largest cable operator in Los Angeles said Friday that its roll-out of high-speed Internet services didn’t have the power needed to get out of low gear--and blamed the city for the delay.
Of the five cable operators serving Greater Los Angeles, Adelphia Communications Corp. has offered high-speed cable modem service to the smallest percentage of its service area--a little less than 40%. By contrast, AT&T; Corp., Cox Communications Inc., Charter Communications Inc. and Time Warner Cable say they have made cable modems available to at least 93% of their subscribers.
Cable modems have three main advantages over dial-up Internet access: They’re up to 20 times faster, they’re always connected to the Internet, and they don’t tie up a phone line. The service, which typically costs $20 to $30 more a month than a dial-up account, is widely viewed as one of the critical precursors to the distribution of music and movies via the Internet.
Aiming to promote high-speed Internet access, the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that cable modems were an information service, not a cable service, greatly reducing the threat of local regulation.
But Lee Perron, Adelphia’s vice president of corporate affairs in Southern California, said the main hurdle for his company had not been regulation; it had been getting the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to provide electricity.
Before it can offer service to former customers of Century Communications Corp., which Adelphia bought for $5.2 billion in 1999, Adelphia must replace Century’s antiquated cables with high-capacity two-way systems that allow data to flow in and out of a home.
Perron said reconstruction work in the Sherman Oaks and Westwood areas was only about 40% finished. In the Eagle Rock area, only 5% of the system has been redone.
Perron and Larry Windsor, regional government affairs manager for Adelphia, said the construction was being delayed by the DWP, which had been slow to provide power, and the Department of Public Works, which had dragged its feet on trenching permits.
Adelphia has about 500 miles of network to install and is building only 25 to 30 miles a week because of the administrative delays, Perron said.
“We have literally approximately 500 power supplies [for the new system] already hung on the poles,” Perron said. “Some of them have been there for a year and a half. We’re just waiting for them to get turned on.”
DWP officials had no immediate response to Adelphia’s complaints.
Windsor said the explanation from the DWP and Public Works had been the same: Hiring freezes had backed up the flow of work. The firm has been asking city officials, including City Council members Jack Weiss and Cindy Miscikowski, to help Adelphia press city agencies to pick up the pace.
Lisa Hansen, a spokeswoman for Weiss, said his aides had passed along Adelphia’s concerns to the DWP. Miscikowski’s office had no immediate comment.
Perron said Adelphia planned to start offering cable modem services in neighborhoods where its cables had been upgraded, even though the rebuild was far from complete. The company plans to launch services in West Los Angeles and Sherman Oaks within 60 days, and in Eagle Rock within 90 days, he said.
