Here comes broadband: cable, phone companies rolling out high-speed Internet service.

Computer users just can't get onto the Internet fast enough.

That became obvious in AT&T's successful effort two weeks ago to acquire the huge cable company MediaOne. And it's also obvious in the ongoing race among cable and phone companies to hook up homes and businesses with high-speed online service.

So far, only small pockets of Los Angeles - mostly on the Westside - have access to broadband technology, which allows users to instantaneously download massive video, voice and data files that would take hours or days to download via conventional dial-up modem connections.

But the rollout is accelerating quickly.

By year's end, communities in the South Bay and the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys are expected to have the high-speed service. And within two to three years, virtually all the L.A. market will be outfitted, according to cable executives and industry watchers.

"We are witnessing a transformation of cable networks from one-way broadcast to two-way voice, video and data transmission, all leading to the integration of television with the Internet on a set-top box," said Barry Kaplan, an analyst with Goldman Sachs & Co.

The question is which players are likely to survive the industry's rapid consolidation. The AT&T-MediaOne deal is just one of several recent mergers involving cable companies with a major L.A. presence. Some believe that in a few years, the cable landscape with be made up of only the biggest, most financially secure operators.

The holy grail that telecom and cable companies are after is the establishment of a single high-speed data pipeline that will combine what have been several separate revenue streams into one mighty river.

Through this pipeline, households and businesses can be continuously hooked into the Internet, receive hundreds of channels of video programming and even have digital phone service. Entertainment-related businesses can transmit digital pictures across the street, the country or the globe in the blink of an eye, vastly simplifying and streamlining the post-production process. Other businesses will be able to transfer huge amounts of data far more efficiently than they can now.

Broadband hookups are about 50 times faster than those of conventional modems and come in two basic forms - the cable modem, which uses fiber-optic lines and is offered by cable companies, and DSL, which uses traditional copper lines and is offered by the phone companies.

Cable and phone companies are especially eager to roll out broadband in Los Angeles because the region has such a high concentration of tech-savvy residents, Internet companies, entertainment studios and others who are viewed as target customers.

For their part, Pacific Bell and GTE Corp. are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to install high-speed DSL lines. Pacific Bell has about 30 DSL centers around L.A. County, with more coming online every month, said spokesman Steve Getzug. Currently, more than 1 million Pacific Bell customers in the greater Los Angeles area have access to DSL service, he said.

"There is a great deal of interest among the cable and telecom providers in bringing L.A. up to speed for broadband service because of the tremendous demand for high-speed data access there," said Mike Hams, president of Phoenix-based Kinetic Strategies Inc. and the publisher of Cable Datacom Report newsletter.

Leading the pack is MediaOne, which has nearly 500,000 subscribers in the L.A. area. By the end of next year, MediaOne expects to have finished rolling out its broadband service in L.A., according to spokeswoman Giselle Acevedo-Franco.

MediaOne and Time Warner Inc. have teamed up to offer broadband through a cable modem service called Road Runner. Competitors are hot on their heels.

Next month, Century Communications is expected to launch its broadband service in Santa Monica and Redondo Beach, according to senior vice president of operations for Southern California Bill Rosendahl. He said those areas were chosen because they were most recently upgraded with fiber-optic wiring.

Cox Communications and AT&T Corp. are offering their own broadband products through cable modem service @Home Corp. - though it's still unclear how AT&T's $58 billion deal with MediaOne will affect that relationship.

Still, L.A. still lags behind some other major metropolitan areas like New York, in part because it is fragmented among several operators, according to Harris.

"It's really challenging from an operations perspective to get L.A. wired and ready for broadband because there are so many operators," he said. "In New York, you have two really well-capitalized companies - Cablevision and Time Warner - which have put their resources into upgrading theft networks."

For years, the L.A. market was split among a dozen or so major operators and 10 to 20 smaller players. The large geographic area and the decentralized political landscape have been cited as the major reasons.

"In L.A, all the different cities made it difficult for one company to come in and rack up a whole series of franchises," said Linda Haugsted, West Coast editor of Multichannel News.

But with the recent consolidation, there are now about a half-dozen players left: MediaOne (soon to be merged into AT&T); Century (soon to be merged into Adelphia Communications); Charter Communications. Time Warner, AT&T and Comcast. (Comcast and Cox Communications also have big chunks of Orange County.)

"AT&T would love to have dominance in L.A.," Harris said. "So would Time Warner. Either of these companies might try to buy out the L.A. holdings of smaller companies, like Adelphia. And mid-tier companies like Adelphia might buy smaller companies like Falcon Cable."

That sets the stage for a massive investment over the next few years.

"Right now, there is a pent-up demand for broadband among the elite and the work-at-home computer users in L.A.," said Jeannette Noyes, an analyst with International Data Corp. "Price is less of an object for these people because they feel they almost cannot live without it. The bigger question, though, is: Once you get over those initial users, how big is the market beyond that?"

L.A. Cable Operators

The city of Los Angeles has contracts with seven cable franchise
operators, each of which has one or more exclusive service areas
within the city. They are:

Operator                   L.A. subscribers(*)

MediaOne                        236,000
Century Communications          145,000
Time Warner                     106,000
AT&T(**)                        100,000
Cox Communications               10,000
Buenavision                       4,000
Falcon Cable TV                      86

Total subscribers               601,086

* Rounded to the nearest 1,000 except Falcon's figure.
** Formerly Tele-Communications International

Source: City of L.A. Information Technology Agency

And that, Noyes and other industry observers say, will depend on three things: price, availability of other modes of access to the Internet (like high-speed phone lines), and the content that is developed to utilize these high-speed services.

So far, according to Cable Datacom Report newsletter Publisher Mike Harris, there are about 830,000 cable-modem subscribers nationwide. While that's about 10 times the number of DSL subscribers, it's far short of the critical mass

that is needed to establish cable modems as the industry standard.

"Right now, cable-modem service is only available for about 25 percent of American homes," Hams said. "To reach critical mass you need more availability."

On the price front, broadband service costs anywhere from $100 to $300 to install, and more if the customer's computer has to be upgraded. Then it costs up to $60 a month for the service itself.

DSL lines also can cost up to several hundred dollars to install, depending on the distance from one of the wiring centers. The monthly service charge typically ranges from $30 to $50, depending on the package selected.

All these prices are expected to come down substantially as the networks are built out and more people sign up.

But even if prices reach the point where most people can afford broadband or DSL lines, the challenge remains to come up with enough content to spark interest beyond a small cadre of potential customers. That, industry observers say, will take time.

With cable modems, for example, there will be hundreds of television channels available. But will large numbers of consumers want to spend more money for 10 times the number of channels that are currently available?

And as for the Internet. the question - at least initially - is whether there will be enough Web sites to take full advantage of the larger bandwidth to transmit complex images or data packets - or will it simply be a speeded-up version of what is already available?