Cox Communications fast-tracks $25 million system-wide upgrade

For as quickly as technology is changing the communications industry, who knows what it will bring next? Whatever it might be, Cox Communications is spending $25 million in Tucson to be prepared.

The privately owned company that says it is Arizona’s largest video provider and second largest phone company is upgrading its 600 miles of fiber optics line locally from 750 megaHertz to 1 gigaHertz. Without going too far down the road of technicalities, this has to do with bandwidth and the amount of stuff that can be pushed through it.

For Cox, it’s a 25 percent improvement. By way of comparison, Comcast’s system locally is an 870 MHz system, and it offers its subscribers video on demand on numerous channels of high-definition TV.

Anne Doris, vice president and system manager for Cox Southern Arizona, and Michael Dunne, director of media relations, liken the upgrade to building a bigger pipeline or a new high-speed roadway to meet future demands.

“We’re building the road for the future,” Dunne says.

“That’s a good way of putting it,” Doris said. “It will be big enough for what we’re doing now and for what we’ll need into the future.”

The good news is that once its completed, the myriad of new services Cox Communications will be able to offer will include video on demand programming, more high-definition TV, more programming in general, higher Internet speeds, better reliability and pretty much anything technological that might be on the horizon.

Doris cautions that adding new services is also subject to negotiations to get the new services.

Although Cox is fast-tracking its upgrade, it’s still going to take some time to deploy the upgrade, which the company officially calls the Extendable Optical Network (EON).

Workers have already begun upgrading the system from east to west along the northernmost areas inside the city limits. Generally, the plan is to then finish up the east side and move west and go south to Green Valley.

Doris said it will take about three years to complete the project.

Cox customers will know the upgrade is coming when they receive a letter from Cox. The upgrade requires some outages usually lasting a couple of days.

Doris said Cox will then call customers in the affected areas two days ahead of time, send an e-mail (to Cox high-speed Internet subscribers) and, finally, put a door-hanger notice at your house when workers get to the neighborhood.

David Hatfield is editor of Inside Tucson Business.