Cable Connects Texans
Cutting Edge Technologies
High-Speed Internet Access
Cable’s early investment and deployment of cable modem service helped
create the robust competition that exists in today’s residential broadband
marketplace. Cable modem technology was developed and began to be deployed
in 1996. The phone companies and other competitors began to deploy DSL in
competition with cable’s modem service – and the race was on to serve the
residential broadband customer. Today, Texas is among the top five states
in the country for the number of high-speed Internet lines. Nearly 2 million
Texans subscribe to broadband Internet service, a 1,100 percent increase
in four years.
The cable industry has aggressively expanded high-speed Internet availability
throughout the state of Texas—in rural areas as well as urban areas. Today, over
75 percent of all Texans have access to cable’s high-speed data service. And
the good news for Texans is that the competitive marketplace will ensure that
access to communications services continues to expand.
To bring broadband services to more remote communities and ensure that
smaller towns have access to the same advanced services as larger cities,
cable companies across the state have utilized what they call a “clustering”
model —linking communities together with fiber optics and serving them
through a centralized computer system.
In the last two years the number of counties without any broadband service providers
decreased from 85 to 16 and the number of counties with 2 to 6 providers increased
from 66 to 117 .
Moreover, unlike other technology providers that may pick and choose the customers
they wish to serve, when cable companies upgrade their networks to offer advanced
services to a community, they upgrade the entire network and bring the same services
to all areas in a community.
