
DATE: Tuesday, November 25, 1997            TAG: 9711250595

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER 
                                            LENGTH:   87 lines

COX OFFERS SPEEDIER INTERNET CABLE MODEMS THAT WILL BE AVAILABLE TO ALL CUSTOMERS BY 2000 ARE 100 TIMES FASTER THAN DIAL-UP VERSIONS.

This isn't ``surfing the Internet'' as in waiting on a three-foot wave in lukewarm August water and maybe riding it for 20 feet.

This is ``surfing the Internet'' as in catching a 20-foot wave in late-October cold water while a hurricane steams up the coast.

That's the difference between seeing the Internet through a standard modem and a cable modem.

Cox Communications Inc. has begun offering Internet service through cable modems to a few Newport News neighborhoods. The high-speed Internet service will be available in a few Chesapeake zip codes early next year and throughout Hampton Roads by the end of the decade, the company says.

``Instead of sitting around and waiting for it to paint, you can literally flip through pages,'' said the Rev. Mark Winward, a Newport News resident who has been testing the service for Cox. ``It changes the Internet experience.''

Changes in the speed at which data can be transmitted over the Internet have been incremental for the past couple of years: 9,600 bits per second modems were replaced by 14,400 bps modems, which were upgraded to 28,800 bps modems and so on.

Internet service through a cable modem leapfrogs numerous incremental improvements. Cox, which will offer the service through its (AT)Home brand, says cable modems will allow a user to transfer data at 1.5 megabits per second to 3 megabits per second. That's about 100 times faster than a dial-up modem.

The (AT)Home service will cost $29.95 a month for Cox's cable customers, $10 more a month for non-customers. A subscriber also needs to buy a cable modem for about $400, or lease one from Cox for $15 monthly.

It will cost $149.95 for Cox technicians to set up the system, including installing a network interface card, software and a virus check.

By comparison, Bell Atlantic Corp. offers high-speed ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) for $31 a month for 20 hours. Set up costs, like those to get a cable modem set up, run several hundred dollars. Bell Atlantic's service does not include Internet access. ISDN is much faster than traditional modem connections, but not nearly as fast as a cable modem.

For now, Cox is offering the service only to 18,000 to 20,000 Newport News residents, said Tony Matthews, marketing manager for high-speed data. The company is rolling out the service in Newport News and Hampton first because that is the part of its network that needed upgrading first.

Over the next couple of years, it will strengthen the backbone of its network in South Hampton Roads.

Cox's (AT)Home service has some minimum computer requirements: an IBM-compatible 486DX with 16 megabytes of RAM and at least Windows 3.11 for work groups; or Macintosh OS8 with 20 megabytes of RAM.

``The earliest opters for this product most likely have the compatibility,'' Matthews said. ``Most people who are just into chat rooms and e-mail are probably not going to opt for this.''

One thing a customer will not need is a second phone line. Cox's high-speed service travels on a hybrid string of coaxial cable and fiber. That is in large part responsible for its speed: the copper wires in coaxial cable are simply thicker and can therefore carry more data than traditional phone lines, Matthews said.

The speed of the cable modem makes features like full-motion video and sound files possible without extensive waiting. During a demonstration at Infinitech Cyber Cafe in Newport News, a 7.7-megabyte videoclip from the movie ``The Rainmaker'' downloaded in seconds.

Cox also plans to cache - or download and store - some of the more popular Internet sites on its own computers at its regional data center in Norfolk. That will shortcut any Internet bottlenecks for those sites: Instead of going out on the Internet to transfer data from the site, users will just be sent to Cox's data center.

``This really makes using the Internet for research practical,'' Winward said. ``I really think this is the wave of the future.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

TAMARA VONINSKI

The Virginian-Pilot

DOWNLOAD SPEEDS

Speeds available to Internet users, from lowest to highest.

Standard modem: 33.6 kilobits per second:

Up-and-coming standard modem: 56 kbps

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN): 128 kbps (Without

compression; with compression, ISDN can reach 512 kbps)

T1: 256 kbps (Fractional; full, 1.5 megabits per second)

Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL): 1.5 mbps (Bell

Atlantic will roll out in mid-1998)

Cable modem: 1.5 to 3 mbps (Cox is offering) KEYWORDS: COX CABLE INTERNET