Local high-speed Internet service to be made available in January

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Beginning in January, high-speed Internet access will become available to some areas of Peachtree City, even as employees of AT&T Broadband continue upgrading the electronics throughout the county.

Kenny Faust, general manager of AT&T Broadband, said yesterday that the entire county should have access to the high-speed Internet service by June, barring any complications. Instead of waiting until the entire county is ready, the company will market the service to customers after hardware upgrades are made in each area.

"We don't want to hold it back," Faust noted.

The service will give customers an Internet connection 50 to 100 times faster than their current service, Faust said. Plus, computers are connected to the network 24 hours a day, requiring no "dial-up" wait time to be connected.

And since the information is sent over existing coaxial cable lines, it frees up customers' phone lines, Faust pointed out. "Those are the main attractions: no dial-up time and you're not tying up your phone line," he said.

The system upgrade will also allow for digital television: a package of up to 120 extra channels which are broadcast digitally, Faust added. That package would be layered onto the current packages cable customers are getting, Faust said.

The high-speed Internet service is now being tested in Peachtree City and some local residents will be selected to test the system and report any bugs. The company is using the system at its offices and becoming familiar with the technology, Faust said.

"We have to do this right and launch a complete package that doesn't have a lot of bugs," he said.

Each customer will need a cable modem to access the service, which can be bought at electronics stores or from AT&T, Faust said. The modems will be portable so they can be used on other cable Internet systems, he added.

Peachtree City's City Hall is already linked to the high-speed Internet service, and local residents can test it out on a computer at the library, Faust said.

Although the access allows for high connection speeds, the actual download speed depends on the speed of the computer the information is being received from, Faust said.

But AT&T will "cache" some popular Internet sites on its computers so customers can pull up the sites at the high-speed connection instead of waiting for the regular site to respond, Faust added.

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