ATandT Cable to add local calling, interactive TV

AT&T Cable Services is now providing customers in Springfield with basic cable, expanded cable, digital and audio cable service, and AT&T @Home high-speed access to the Internet.

But looking ahead the company hopes to add local phone service and interactive television to the lineup.

Cable TV

Locally, AT&T's basic cable offers customers 29 channels, expanded basic adds another 38 channels and the recently introduced digital cable increases the customer's channel capacity by 50 to 60 channels, plus up to 37 channels of digital audio.

The upper range channels and music channels can only be accessed through digital cable service. On the music channels, "the terminal connects to your stereo and you can hear any type of music you choose, commercial free," said AT&T Cable Services General Manager Blaine Randles.

Randles added that there are now approximately 20,000 digital cable customers in the Springfield area.

Internet access

The newest addition to AT&T's services in the Springfield area is @Home, the company's high-speed Internet access service, which became available in February.

"A cable modem is installed in order to interface with the computer," Randles said. "A lot of people telecommute. It can take a long time to download a file, and time is money. People are impressed with the access speed. The typical access speed with a local Internet service provider can range between 36 and 50 kilobytes per second. But with @Home, the typical speed can range between 500 kilobytes and 2 megabytes per second."

Randles said @Home is now available to almost everyone in Springfield.

"Right now, it's not available to some in the southwest portion of town," he said. "But it will be over the next two months at the latest."

The charge for @Home is now $19.95 a month when the customer signs up for six months, but next year @Home will be offered on three different price levels ranging between $19.95 and $39.95 a month, the price being determined by the access speed.

"Some customers may not need the highest access speed," Randles said.

Business services

In addition to its television and Internet services, AT&T Cable is also providing fiber-optic interconnectivity between businesses via their computers, Randles said. "We have about 25 to 30 commercial customers now." The cost of this program varies by customer. The average cost ranges from $30 a month to $200 to $300 per month.

On the horizon

There are two additional services AT&T Cable hopes to offer in the next few years. Randles said the company hopes to launch its telephony program in late 2001 or early in 2002.

With this program, customers could receive their cable, digital cable, high-speed Internet access and local phone service all through AT&T.

"It would be nice to have everything on one bill," he said. "Everything would come through one cable coax instead of separate wires for each thing. The price on all four items might come down because we would be offering a package of four things instead of them individually."

AT&T Cable is currently experimenting with interactive television in two of its markets. Randles said interactive TV would bring e-mail and video games to the Springfield market. If the experiment goes well, interactive TV could be coming to the area by the end of 2001.

AT&T Cable Systems operates about 550 cable systems throughout the United States with approximately 16.5 million customers. While the cable operations are called AT&T Cable Services, the corporate entity is now known as AT&T Broadband and has its headquarters in New Jersey.