Technical Problems Slow At&T System

Some 18 months after launching a cable Internet option for Spokane Web surfers, AT&T officials say they’re slowly overcoming technical problems that have delayed full roll-out of the high-speed service.

Declining to say how many subscribers have signed up for the At Home cable modem service, AT&T officials here say only that the high-speed net service has grown 180 percent the last six months.

Much of the growth is due to aggressive marketing.

But hundreds of interested home computer users have asked for the service, only to learn they must wait.

The reason: Spokane’s AT&T network - which can provide cable TV to 150,000 Spokane County homes - can now wire only one-third with high-speed cable modems.

Over the past year, AT&T officials began replacing about 1,000 network amplifiers that are needed to provide high-speed network connections.

“This is probably the most common concern we’re getting - people unhappy we can’t provide the (cable modem) service,” said Alison Ruckhaber of AT&T Cable Services.

“It’s frustrating for them. It’s also frustrating for us, since we can’t give them a product they want,” she said.

Spokane officials say they hope to upgrade the remaining network amplifiers over the next 18 months.

Those who’ve been able to get the high-speed network service pay either $29.95 or $39.95 per month. AT&T splits that fee with Excite At Home, a Redwood City, Calif., company that provides the cable modems and runs the network.

When operating properly, the cable-modem connection should be 50 times faster than a standard 56K home modem.

When launching the cable-modem system in late 1998, officials here didn’t realize that two-thirds of the county’s cable system couldn’t operate the Excite At Home service properly, Ruckhaber said. That meant roughly 100,000 homes in the county couldn’t use the system.

Ruckhaber explained the setback resulted from a purchase in 1992 of equipment that was inadequate for the cable-modem system.

In that year, Cox Cable - the initial Spokane cable system operator - installed about 1,000 network amplifiers designed to provide high-speed cable modem connections.

But in 1998, the At Home system required more sophisticated amplifiers and routers than those installed earlier, said Ruckhaber.

AT&T, which took over the Spokane system last year, has spent the past 10 months plotting the upgrade and replacing amplifiers.

Ruckhaber said that upgrade has been “slow but progressing,” Ruckhaber said.

Nationwide, Excite At Home says it has 1.5 million cable-modem users.

Ruckhaber said AT&T, like most cable operators, does not disclose the number of broadband cable-modem subscribers because that would assist competitors who offer other other broadband Internet services, like Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or wireless connections.

About 87,000 homes in Spokane County use AT&T to view broadcast and cable network television programs. That’s about 58 percent of all the homes that could subscribe, said Ruckhaber.

The subscriber rate for cable modems is lower than 10 percent of potential homes right now, said Kevin Daymont, the volunteer chairman of the Spokane Area Citizens Cable Advisory Board.

He bases his estimate on what other cable systems report nationwide.

One potential subscriber, Jim Biddison, lives near Moran Prairie, calls the company about once a month and keeps hearing the same news: no service where he lives.

“I’d gladly pay for that service. It’d be worth it to me - if I could ever get it,” said Biddison, a computer programmer for Metropolitan Securities.