THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050461
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Cox Communications Inc. on Tuesday gave the strongest signal to date that it's serious about turning its Hampton Roads cable-TV system into a broad-based communications network.
Cox said it has begun testing technology that within two years could let residential customers buy phone services, order videos on demand and manage electricity use throughout their homes.
The trial, in the Norfolk and Virginia Beach homes of 48 employees, is in conjunction with Northern Telecom Inc., a Canadian company that is a leading manufacturer of telecommunications equipment.
Atlanta-based Cox has been aggressively pushing into new communications technologies and services in recent years.
It is building a phone/cable network in England in a joint venture with Southwestern Bell Co. The network already passes about 650,000 homes there and have more phone customers than cable customers.
Meanwhile, in the United States a consortium of which Cox is a member said last week that it will invest as much as $8 billion over the next several years to develop a nationwide phone network. Sprint Corp. is heading that group.
Cox already uses its cable systems in Hampton Roads and several other markets to provide business customers with access to long-distance telephone companies.
Cox's ability to provide phone service to homes in southeastern Virginia will depend largely on how the State Corporation Commission uses authority granted itby the General Assembly this year to abolish service monopolies now enjoyed by carriers like Bell Atlantic Corp. and GTE Corp.
Congress also is debating legislation that would break down barriers to competition across the telecommunications industry. The passage of that legislation could help determine the timing of Cox's phone-service roll-out.
Cox is hoping that its technical trial will prove to lawmakers and regulators that it's not just willing to broaden its service offerings, said Franklin R. Bowers, the company's Hampton Roads general manager.
``We want to show . . . that we're capable of doing these things,'' he said.
It also helps Cox position itself against Bell Atlantic, which wants to offer cable-TV services of its own in Hampton Roads within the next year.
Cox said its Hampton Roads system was chosen for the trial because it is one of the most technologically advanced systems in the cable industry.
The company has installed about 500 miles of high-capacity fiber-optic cables in the system. And the system's ``ring-in-ring'' architecture, which involves two different transmission paths, is considered the most extensive in the industry.
In the trial, Cox said one ring will be used primarily for carrying video transmissions, the other for telephone and data services, such as access to the Internet, the increasingly popular worldwide web of computer networks.
One of the key elements of the trial, which is expected to last between six months and a year, is the testing of what Cox managers described as a ``network interface unit.'' This unit, to be mounted on the outside of participants' homes, will be where wires for various types of services are linked to the coaxial cable that runs out of the home to the fiber-optic ``node'' for the neighborhood.
Cox managers said that within the participating homes, TVs, telephones and personal computers will all be linked into the interface unit.
Bowers declined to say how much Cox and Northern Telecom will spend for the trial. by CNB