Out-of-date cable network keeps @home out of Boulder

Golden has it, Wheat Ridge has it, even Lowry has it.

Ultra-high speed — 500 kbps to 1 Mbps or more — Internet access via cable using TCI@Home service.

In Boulder, the only wire that pipes in Internet packets is copper telephone wire. Folks who require high-speed access are relegated to the relatively paltry 128 kbps ISDN or, if it’s available in their area, 256 kbps to 7 Mbps DSL.

If TCI can deliver digital cable — many more channels, better picture and sound, and TV Guide Interactive on-screen Navigator — to Boulder, why can’t it deliver broadband data services like Internet over the same pipe?

According to TCI, soon to be known as AT&T Broadband & Internet Services, it’s an upgrade problem.

Unlike telephone service that is inherently a two-way medium, cable networks traditionally have provided downstream-only service. And although digital cable uses a telephone return for sending user data back to TCI, @Home is delivered strictly via cable.

“About 7,000 miles of cable need to be replaced or upgraded in the Denver/Boulder market,´ said TCI spokesman Matt Fleury. “It also entails the electronic equipment — amplifiers and powering equipment — that is spaced along that network that will make it two-way capable.”

The best prediction Fleury can make is that the this service will be available throughout the Boulder/Denver area “over the course of the next several years.”

Richard Varnes, director of the city of Boulder Cable TV office, is as frustrated as anyone. “Last May TCI, in public and in writing, told us it was their intent to bring cable modem service to Boulder within 1999,” Varnes said.

But, Varnes continued, the fact that the city won’t see it this year isn’t entirely TCI’s fault. “Boulder doesn’t have a uniform permitting system. Everyone underestimated the planning and permitting process in Boulder.”

Vice President of Franchising Teri Scott concurred. “We were going to start late last year, and we haven’t even begun construction because of the permitting problem,” she said. “We’re still working on that with the city.”

Scott said the upgrade is delayed least six months, and once started should take about 18 months to two years.

on Facebook on LinkedIn