COX COMMUNICATIONS WORKS TO UPGRADE TO DIGITAL CABLE.(BUSINESS)

Byline: VANDANA SINHA THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT\

NORFOLK -- Cox Communications is digging up its underground web of cable lines and pumping them up to deliver digital cable and high-speed Internet access to family rooms across the city.

By next week, residents in the Larchmont area could call the company to order 100 more cable channels or a cable modem twice as fast as some digital subscriber lines.

Residents in the Ghent area could follow in a few more weeks, and those around Lafayette Park and downtown Norfolk soon after that. By the end of the year, Cox will have squeezed digital cable and Internet access capability into its entire Norfolk network.

It's the third of four South Hampton Roads cities where Cox has been upgrading its fiber in the past two years.

Chesapeake and Virginia Beach residents north of the Pungo area already have access to both services. Portsmouth is budgeted for next year.

Charter Communications plans to switch on digital cable and high-speed data in Suffolk in the middle of this year.

With a slim converter that resembles an audio receiver, digital cable takes television surfing to a Jetsons level. It offers 10 TV screenfuls of program

options, including pay-per-view. It abolishes the need for channel numbers, making the one-time Cox vs. Fox standoff a moot point.

It allows TV watchers to order pay-per-view movies, block R-rated shows with a password, search the electronic TV guide for action-adventure-themed programming and time the TV to turn to your favorite show - all with a new universal remote.

It's enough to warrant ``Channel 116,'' where a half-hour training program on how to operate digital cable runs repeatedly for 24 hours.

Eventually, the upgraded cables will ship digital telephone services and a new program called Movies on Demand, which allows a resident to buy a pay-per-view film for a 24-hour period.

Cox is hoping the more than $300 million upgrade wins the battle against satellite television and deepens the company's local penetration, logged at more than 62 percent of the 635,000 homes its fiber passes.

About 68 percent of that total fiber has been widened to allow two-way transmission necessary for digital services.

As that percentage grows in Norfolk, residents will start to see Cox trucks parked at their street corners and fliers sticking off their doorknobs. They'll hear contractors ring their doorbells with news of updated wires and telemarketers urge them to sign on to the high-tech offerings.

``We just basically inundate you with information,'' said Rhonda J. Cox, senior product manager for digital cable.

Some may hear Cox officials ask for permission to plant a 3-foot-high, dark green generator in their yards to support the cables when they overload or fail.

So far, Cox has won approval to locate 200 of 353 necessary generators on private property or public rights of way in Norfolk. By the end of Cox's upgrade, 2,650 units will have found a home in Hampton Roads, hidden under a tree or behind some brush.

``That's really our toughest issue,'' said Fred Cormier, project supervisor for construction. ``We've been working it out with the cities.''

Fraying cables can also delay matters. In the Red Mill area of Virginia Beach, to the east of the intersection of General Booth Boulevard and Princess Anne Road, lie 1,800 feet of cable too old to upgrade. Replacing that line will take weeks, postponing the arrival of digital services there until next month at the earliest.

Reach Vandana Sinha at vsinha@pilotonline.com or 446-2318.

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