By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

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 by letter that it is in violation of its 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.