THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 19, 1994 TAG: 9407190336
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 94 lines
Like Virginia's blustery four-way Senate campaign, the race to deliver cable TV to people in Hampton Roads is starting to get crowded.
Within the next month, the first of several new TV-delivery systems planned locally is scheduled to launch: a 29-channel ``wireless cable'' service. New satellite-delivered services and TV via the phone line won't be far behind.
Together the new offerings promise to give Cox, TCI and other local cable monopolists their first major competition for viewers.
They'd rather do without the fight, but Hampton Roads cable executives say they'll be ready. ``We certainly expect an impact,'' said John Margeson, state director for Tele-Communications Inc., which has 88,000 subscribers in Chesapeake and Newport News. ``We'll do what we have to do to meet competition.''
The least hyped of the new candidates in the TV race is wireless cable. Yet among the new challengers it's likely to be first out of the gate. Hampton Roads Wireless TV Systems Inc. is planning to begin its 29-channel service by mid-August, transmitting via microwave from a tower in Suffolk's Driver section.
Roddy Edge, vice president and general manager of Hampton Roads Wireless, said the company hasn't advertised and doesn't plan to. He said the new system, a unit of CAI Wireless Systems Inc. of Albany, N.Y., will quietly turn on in about three weeks and then try to build the business gradually, concentrating first in pockets of Hampton Roads where traditional cable isn't available.
He estimated that as many as 35,000 of the 500,000 homes in his system's service territory, which includes most of Hampton Roads and northeasternmost North Carolina, aren't now offered cable service.
``We're not going to turn down any business,'' Edge said. ``I hope our phones do ring off the hook. But at the same time, we want to control our business so we can provide good customer service.''
People who subscribe to Hampton Roads Wireless will need to mount a special antenna outside their homes. Edge said the antenna and a set-top converter will be included in the basic monthly rate for the service, which hasn't been finalized.
He said the basic rate - which will include such cable-TV networks as CNN, ESPN and Disney, as well as local broadcast stations like WTKR and WHRO - will be below that of traditional cable operators. But since traditional operators generally have 40 or more channels in their basic packages, the cost per channel for wireless may not be less, he said.
Wireless cable has been slowly gaining popularity around the country. Short on frills because of limited channel capacity, it has been described as a ``meat-and-potatoes'' alternative to traditional cable.
Local TV gourmands may find other services now being prepared more to their liking.
Prominent among those are two satellite-delivered services called DirecTV and USSB that are gradually being rolled out nationwide. Using digital technology, they promise an unparalleled picture and sound quality and, eventually, hundreds of channels of programming, including the most popular cable networks, pay-per-view movies and sports events.
But it takes a special 18-inch dish and receiver at home to get the services. And so far the $700 equipment package is available only in five small Southern cities. But the systems will likely be in local Circuit City, Sears and home-satellite stores by early September, said Linda Brill, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based DirecTV, a subsidiary of General Motors Corp.
There's one other announced entrant to the Hampton Roads video fray: Bell Atlantic Corp. That company hasn't said exactly when it plans to jump into the TV market. But it will be sometime early next year, if the Federal Communications Commission approves, company executives have indicated.
The long-term success of its video rollout, Bell Atlantic has said, will depend largely on the public's acceptance of interactive TV - for example, people using their phone-linked sets to shop at video malls. Bell has been busily installing fiber-optic cables throughout the mid-Atlantic region to carry the interactive traffic load.
Franklin R. Bowers, vice president and general manager of Cox Cable Communications Inc.'s 194,000-subscriber Hampton Roads system, said he's keeping an eye on all the coming challengers.
But he regards Bell Atlantic as the most serious of them. That's because Bell is already well known locally for its phone business and because it's best-positioned to compete with Cox in the interactive world - though Cox also has been aggressively installing fiber.
``That,'' Bowers said of interactive ventures, ``is where the future lies.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
CHRISTOPHER REDDICK/Staff
Coming soon: 29-channel ``wireless cable'' service, introduced by
Roddy Edge, vice president and general manager of Hampton Roads
Wireless TV Systems Inc. He's holding one of the special antennas
that customers will use to pick up microwave signals from the tower
behind him, in the Driver area of Suffolk.
by CNB