THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 30, 1996 TAG: 9604300436
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
John Prisco says he cringes when he hears people in the telecommunications industry refer to his company's technology as an ``interim strategy'' in the fight for TV viewership.
Prisco is president of CAI Wireless Systems Inc. of Albany, N.Y., better known to its local customers as Hampton Roads Choice TV. A ``wireless cable'' operator, it uses microwave signals to transmit about two dozen television channels.
It's an old technology that's gained, at best, modest business around the country. CAI's Hampton Roads system has about 2,500 local subscribers - less than one-half of 1 percent as many as Cox Communications Inc., the region's dominant cable provider, has in the same territory.
But that is now.
Last year, CAI signed on a high-powered investor named Bell Atlantic Corp. Together, the two are investing tens of millions of dollars locally to dress wireless cable in a spanking new high-tech package that they think will lure customers away in droves from Cox.
By year's end, Bell Atlantic plans to take over the marketing of the wireless service and deliver more than 100 channels of programming over CAI's platform. It's one of a series of steps toward what the regional phone company says will be a major focus on video services in the years ahead. CAI, as the platform provider, will get a cut of the revenues the new deluxe service brings in.
All but one part of this has pleased CAI's Prisco. That's the oft-repeated assertion by Bell Atlantic's video leaders that this wireless TV thing is an in-between move.
The party line is that Bell Atlantic will rely on wireless cable until it makes sense technologically and commercially to migrate the delivery of TV and a panoply of other video services, from home shopping to on-demand computer games, over to phone lines.
To which Prisco says: maybe, maybe not.
``I want to begin dispelling the myth that this is an interim strategy,'' he said in an interview Monday. ``It depends on how you define interim. This may be a 15-year technology or even longer.''
For some areas of the country, maybe Hampton Roads, he says, it may be decades before elaborate interactive TV systems via phone lines are a reality.
Prisco and his cohorts at CAI are trying to drum up interest in their company now because they believe they have something to crow about.
That is the successful test this month - according to CAI officials - of some new technology in Hampton Roads that will make its local system the most advanced wireless-cable system in the country.
Transmitting from the top of the NationsBank building in downtown Norfolk, CAI has been able to throw signals to a territory that includes about 80 percent of Hampton Roads' population, Prisco said. Three lower-powered booster transmitters in Chesapeake, Hampton and Suffolk helped carry the signals to the outermost reaches of the broadcast territory.
The test footprint is a ``big boost'' over CAI's current broadcast territory, which ranges between 40 percent and 50 percent of the market, Prisco said.
The increased coverage will help Bell Atlantic market its deluxe service later this year, he said. But it's not the only thing.
The signals for the new service will be digital, compared to the current analog transmissions. That will enable Bell Atlantic to compress several times more channels of programming into the same broadcast bandwidth now reserved for wireless cable. That could be as many as 120, the phone company says, not to mention numerous ``channelettes'' for snippets of information and commercials.
Prisco said the digital platform will enable Bell Atlantic to do this while actually improving on the current picture and sound quality of wireless cable. And the antennas that people have to install on their homes - which now loosely resemble outdoor barbecue grills - will be far less obtrusive, he said.
Bell Atlantic executives haven't made any projections for customer sign-ups for the new service, nor disclosed rates. The company just named a local Hampton Roads general manager - William P. Morton, a former Cablevision Systems general manager from the Boston area. It's renovating an office in Chesapeake's Greenbrier section for its local video headquarters. And it's been talking with some local programmers, including public broadcaster WHRO, about developing some new shows that will be proprietary to its service.
Bell Atlantic will be joining an increasingly crowded field of multi-channel video purveyors that also includes several satellite-TV services. More are on the way.
Cox managers have promised a spirited defense of its lead locally.
Prisco, who worked for Bell Atlantic before joining CAI in February, said he thinks the phone company will do all right, however.
``We're pretty enthusiastic that they'll be able to hit a home run with this service,'' he said. by CNB