Fayette

County's vaunted quality of life may be one

strike against the county in its quest for

quality cable television service, said assistant

county manager Chris Cofty.

"I

feel that it's because of density. It's just not

as lucrative to spend that money here,"

Cofty told The Citizen this week.

Fayette's

penchant for two- to five-acre residential home

sites creates a situation in which the county is

less attractive to industries like cable TV that

get their highest profit in the most densely

populated areas, he said.

Cofty

and other county officials are applying

increasing pressure to MediaOne, holder of a

franchise agreement to provide exclusive service

to most of unincorporated Fayette County, to

improve its service here or risk losing the

franchise.

The

city of Fayetteville also grants exclusive rights

to MediaOne. Its franchise agreement expires at

the end of this year, and Cofty is negotiating

for renewal of that contract as well. And

although the county's contract was approved only

last year and is good for ten years, the

agreement could be revoked for failure to comply.

And

MediaOne has recently been acquired by AT&T,

and there's no requirement that Fayette County

transfer the contract to the new owners.

Two

weeks ago, when MediaOne representatives made a

courtesy call on Fayetteville City Council,

council members told them in no uncertain terms

that they need to improve their response to

customer complaints. "Y'all's record is

terrible," said Councilman Walt White.

At

about the same time, Cofty informed the company

franchise agreement because it has failed to

maintain its current equipment and its customer

service record is below Federal Communications

Commission standards.

Numerous

Fayette residents, in phone calls to The Citizen

and the county government, have voiced the

opinion that competition may be the answer.

Several have called for revoking the franchise

agreement and allowing other cable companies to

serve the county.

Easier

said than done, said Cofty. "We have talked

with numerous companies," he said. "We

can't get anybody that wants to come in here and

overbuild MediaOne. They don't want to go head to

head."

It

costs more to build a completely new system than

to upgrade an old one, he said, and in a

competitive situation, a company can't expect to

win over all of the old system's customers, so

"You're talking about less than 50 percent

of the market for a lot higher investment,"

said Cofty.

The

search for an interested competitor will

continue, Cofty said, but in the meantime

customers who want to let their feet do the

talking in their dealings with MediaOne have a

choice of buying a satellite dish or using

BellSouth's cable service. But BellSouth

currently doesn't have much market saturation in

Fayette, said Cofty.

Cofty

said he believes the only reason MediaOne hasn't

already upgraded in Fayette is because of the

sparse population here. "We have the oldest

system they currently operate," he said.

"They're doing the upgrades everywhere but

in Fayette County," he added.

Company

officials have repeatedly insisted that they are

interested in bringing Fayette into the state of

the art in cable service, but it takes time to

rebuild an entire system.

Construction

will start early in 2000 on a new fiber optic

system for Fayette, according to company

spokesman Reg Griffin, and it will be finished by

September or October, well in advance of the Dec.

31 deadline imposed by the franchise agreement,

he said.

Company

officials are working to solve the customer

service problems, he said, but operators were

swamped with calls due to stormy weather earlier

this summer.

Cofty

said some of those calls could be eliminated if

the company would maintain its current system

until it replaces that equipment.

One

resident who phoned The Citizen suggested that

local customers be charged less for cable service

until the new system is in place. "We pay

the same thing down here for our MediaOne that

they do in Gwinnett and Cobb County, but we don't

get near as many channels. If you don't get the

same quality or the same number of channels, your

bill shouldn't be as high," she said.

Griffin

said that approach is backward. MediaOne prides

itself on not increasing its rates once the new

service is in place, he said. "Fayette

customers won't see a rate increase when the new

service is in place. That's our goal," he

said.

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