Northern VA CATV systems

Wed May 9 11:43:27 UTC 2001

Here is an article in a local publication about the local CATV 
service. The local county government is getting involved.

-craig

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 From "The Connection", Volume XV, Number 18 May 2-8, 2001, Page 11

Cox Internet Quality Questioned

  Having received numerous telephone calls and e-mails from 
constituents about the quality of Road Runner Internet service, a 
subsidiary of Cox Communications, Supervisor Gerald Connolly 
(D-Providence) has decided to get the Board of Supervisors involved.

  "Road Runner represents that it provides quick and efficient service 
with infrequent downtime, said COnnolly. "Unfortunately, Road Runner 
does not seem to be living up to its image."

  According to Connolly there have been times where service has been 
down for as much as a day.

  Connolly asked the board's support in asking the County's Department 
of Telecommunications and Consumer Services to require Cox to advise 
the department of all outage times and find a mechanism for 
automatically applying a credit to consumer's accounts for delays in 
excess of hour hours a day.

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At 8:28 PM -0400 07/05/2001, RJ Atkinson wrote:
>  >> Some areas still have both a contract with the local government, and tax
>>>  breaks and other services provided to them by the local government. This is
>>>  why the 'open access' arguement is raging fiercly in places like Northern
>>>  Virginia -- Fox Cable got millions in tax and right of access breaks from
>>>  the government over the years, but now claims that they own the cable and
>>>  shouldn't be required to resell access to competitors.
>
>The above is just plain wrong, fact-wise.  I live in Northern
>VA.  The cable company you are trying to name is "Cox Cable",
>I think, though it might be Comcast.  They got ZERO in breaks,
>because they just took over the system from Media General.
>The system they got from Media General was so run down that
>Cox is having to re-build the entire system.  Ditto for Comcast,
>which took over the Reston, Prince William County, Arlington,
>and Alexandria systems, which were also in bad shape (e.g.
>mostly copper, little if any fibre) prior to Comcast.
>
>There might be different places where the CATV firms got a break,
>but Northern VA was not one of them.
>
>Oh, and there is no raging "open access" debate in Northern VA
>going on.  By and large, the folks with Cox/RoadRunner or
>Comcast at Home are happy with their service.  There aren't protests,
>the newspapers (e.g. The Washington Post) don't have any articles
>about such a local 'debate', etc.
>
>Oh yes, and before you get into ad hominem attacks, I don't
>own stock in either Cox or Comcast (never have) and don't work
>for them (never did), so I have no axe to grind in what I say
>above.
>
>There might or might not be merits in forced access to CATV
>cabling, but inventing fictional accounts of what's happened
>in Northern VA is not contributing to a discussion of that topic.
>
>Ran
>rja at inet.org