Expect to see MediaOne crews tearing out old cable and replacing it with new fiber-optic lines early next year, says Reg Griffin, director of communications for the cable company.

"We're giving customers notification about 60 days out," said Griffin. Other than that, we don't have a schedule, and in a competitive situation with BellSouth, we're not giving a lot of details."

The company is replacing the old technology all over metropolitan Atlanta, making fiber optics available to about a million homes. Regulations require that state-of-the-art service be available not only to the approximately 550,000 homes being served by the company, but also an additional 400,000 homes that cable lines pass on their way to customers' homes.

In Fayette County, MediaOne has 13,922 customers, and its lines pass about 7,000 homes not being served.

When the upgrade is completed, not only will cable television service improve, Griffin said, but also new high-speed internet and regular phone service will be available on the cable lines. But first priority will be cable TV, Griffin said.

"We need to prove to our customers in Fayette County that we can do an excellent job providing their cable services," he said, adding that the firm hopes to attract more customers as service improves. "We will probably win some folks back who have left us," he said.

Customer service problems are largely due to the antiquated system, said Griffin, but he added that problems also have resulted from the turmoil created as the company prepares to upgrade, a process that has been in the design phase since late 1995.

"We've had a real transformation around here in the last year," he said, but the company's new vice president of operations has made customer service a priority, he added.

It will take some time to build a new cable system, and customers may experience outages during the upgrade process, said Griffin. MediaOne's new franchise agreement with Fayette County requires completion of the upgrade by Dec. 31, 2000.