Cities wire into new cable technology age.

SAN FERNANDO VALLEY - Glendale and Burbank are soon to be two of the best-wired cities in L.A. County, but they won't enjoy their advantage for long.

Throughout Southern California, fiber optic cables are being laid that eventually will make real the dreams of cable companies to become universal communications providers.

In the short run, that means more TV channels for residents of selected communities like Glendale and Burbank, although they'll be paying more for their improved service. In the long term, it is expected to mean lower phone bills, cheaper access to high-tech services like video teleconferencing, and exponentially faster access to the Internet.

For the past seven months, Dallas-based Marcus Cable Co. L.P. has been replacing the coaxial cables in Glendale, Burbank, Montrose, La Crescenta and La Canada with fiber optics. These cables are capable of carrying a great deal more data than their coaxial counterparts, giving extra capacity for more channels and two-way services.

On June 3, the system will be complete for half of Glendale's 42,000 cable subscribers and a quarter of Burbank's 44,000 subscribers, and the company is rolling out 36 new channels to residents of the finished areas.

The price for cable TV will go up as well. Fees for Marcus' top tiers of service will increase by $5.95 a month, according to district manager John Monsen, who supervises Marcus' Glendale office.

The fiber optic upgrade follows a mandate by the Glendale City Council last year. Marcus Cable bought 200 cable franchises, including those in Glendale, Burbank and the other Southern California cities, from Dallas-based Sammons Communications Inc. for about $1 billion in March 1995. But each affected city still had to approve the transfer of the franchise from Sammons to Marcus.

In November, Glendale officials approved the deal only after Sammons put up $500,000 to ensure that Marcus would proceed with a fiber optic upgrade that Sammons had already promised to perform.

Nonetheless, Monsen said his company is going above and beyond what Sammons promised to do last year. Marcus is spending $20 million on the 650-mile Southern California upgrade, which will be finished by the end of 1997.

The Telecommuncations Act of 1996 allows cable TV and phone companies to compete, meaning that many firms are now experimenting with providing telephone service through fiber optic cables. Expanded business services made feasible by these lines also include high-speed video conferencing and Internet access through soon-to-be-released cable modems, which are expected to make online communication several times faster than it is today.

Monsen said his company is laying cable down the main streets of the commercial districts in Glendale and Burbank, eventually allowing business users to tap into the fiber optic cables from office buildings. As for which new services Marcus will offer and when, no one yet knows, Monsen said.

"Basically, we've built a network that's as capable as any network anywhere of supporting new services," Monsen said. "We just don't know yet which ones will take off."

Elsewhere in L.A. County, other cable companies are also trying to get fiber optic technology in place. In 1993, Boston-based Continental Cablevision Inc. embarked on a $100 million fiber optic upgrade in Southern California that will be 50 percent complete by the end of this year, according to Susan Ritchie, a spokeswoman in Continental's El Segundo office.

Continental's system is a hybrid fiber optic/coaxial network that, by the time it is complete in 1998, will cover the company's entire Southern California service area that stretches froth Santa Clarita in the north through Hollywood and South Central Los Angeles, and includes cities in Orange and Riverside counties.

The company plans to begin limited tests of phone services through the cable network later this year, Ritchie said. In July, it will also announce a lineup of new cable channels for subscribers in Hollywood, West L.A., Lynwood, Culver City and Paramount.