Hi guys
Haven't been following this company for a while now. You might like to hear this:
<<Cox wired for Internet
Ultra-fast access cornerstone of cable company's
venture
By Peter Dujardin
Daily Press
NEWPORT NEWS
Cox Communications will begin offering high-speed Internet connections to 18,000 Newport News households on Saturday, promising that the new service will be available to all of Newport News, Hampton and Chesapeake by the end of next year.
The service, which uses high-speed cable modems in combination with fiber-optic and coaxial cable, is more than 100 times faster than the typical dial-up modem connection, company officials said.
''It's instantaneous,'' said Franklin R. Bowers, vice president and general manager of Cox's Virginia Beach office.
Called Cox@Home, the service will provide e-mail, access to the World Wide Web and some local content.
Using the same cable on which households receive their TV signals, Cox promises data transmission of roughly 3 million to 6 million bits per second. Though not unheard of in the business world, such speeds are rare in household Internet connections.
''It's not really for people who are just doing chats,'' Bowers said, ''What it does is make it that much easier to truly tour the Internet, especially for people who are downloading lots of graphics and software. It's a very effective tool.''
One of the system's big advantages, Bowers said, is that users can be connected to the service continuously, without ever having to dial in, and use Internet and television simultaneously.
''You don't have to have a second phone line,'' Bowers said. Cox, the area's dominant cable provider, will launch the service in Newport News because the company recently upgraded the city's cable system, said Tony Matthews, Cox's marketing manager for high-speed data. It made sense and saved money, he said, to design the system while the new cable was being laid.
Though Newport News, Hampton and Chesapeake will be the first to receive the system, Bowers said, the plan is for all Hampton Roads homes to be ''high-speed data certified'' by 2000.
''We're doing it slowly to make sure it's rolled out without any technical problems,''Bowers said. ''It will come in a very managed way.''
Hampton Roads will be the fifth market nationwide to have Cox@Home. The company already offers the service in San Diego and Orange County, Calif., Phoenix, Ariz., Omaha, Neb., and parts of Connecticut.
Though high-speed Internet service is now only a small part of the cable business, it could be the industry's future.
Aside from Cox, other cable companies, such as Media One, TCI and Comcast, also are offering speedy Internet connections, said Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Research Corp., a telecommunications research company in Parsippany, N.J.
''Cable companies are in jeopardy as a consequence of satellite
telecommunications,'' he said. ''Providing high-bandwith services to ride on top of fiber networks is their only hope for the future.''
What Cox@Home will do to the local Internet provider market remains to be seen, but Ed Fang, director of Oyster Point-based VisiNet, said he's not worried.
''Some of our dial-up business might be affected,'' he said. ''But I don't see it as a threat per se. There's always new technology coming out. Even where they've had high-speed access, none of the cable providers in any market has been dominant.''
Although the new system will be much faster than a phone line connection, Fang said, the promise of delivering 3 to 6 megabits per second is a ''technology marketing ploy.''
He speculated that there will still be bottlenecks in the system: ''The reality is that there's no single site on the Internet that is designed for anything that fast,'' he said.
Still, Fang said, he's ''looking forward to seeing how it works.''
More information about Cox@Home can be found on the Web at www.home.net.>>
This stuff is happening. Cox is capable and agressive. Unfortunately I am too far out on the perimeter to be in the first wave of deployment. Surprised there is no news of this posted here already.
Leo
dailypress.com I posted the whole article because I think it will be gone tomorrow morning. |
