VALLEY'S NET GAIN; FIRM WILL OFFER BLAZING ONLINE ACCESS.

Byline: Phillip W. Browne and Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writers

San Fernando Valley residents will be the first in Los Angeles to step into an Internet revolution this year, with the debut of online access through cable television lines at speeds 100 times faster than the telephone links common in most homes.

The breakthrough will finally open the door for innovations that companies and futurists have long promised:

Video on demand, instant music for fans and the ability for graphic artists, architects, engineers, musicians and others to work from home just as easily as they would from their office or studio, according to Internet experts.

``It's a sufficiently large leap forward that a lot of interesting applications are going to come about - some of which we can't imagine yet,'' said Babak Daneshrad, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The service, called Road Runner, will be available come summer to Time-Warner Communications' 120,000 customers in the West Valley and surrounding areas.

Road Runner offers breakneck Internet speed for $50 a month - a service that now can cost businesses thousands of dollars. The connection comes with the Road Runner Internet service - similar to America Online and EarthLink - giving access to local and national multimedia content, chat rooms, newsgroups and the World Wide Web.

In San Diego, where the company introduced Road Runner in February 1997, the service has made Internet surfing strikingly easier for Ilena Rosenthal, who runs an online breast-implant support group.

Her communications with group members in England, Austria and New Zealand are now 1,000 times more efficient, she said.

``I can send mass e-mail to several thousand people in 30 seconds. It used to take me 5 minutes,'' said Rosenthal, 50, who has been using Road Runner since it was launched.

``And it cost just as much as my old Internet service with the cost of the phone line. I would recommend it to anyone.''

At the same time, the entrance of cable-supplied Internet services has opened a new battlefield on which the largest telecommunications companies are fighting. Consumer advocates say what is at stake is choice for consumers, while cable companies insist the quibble could delay the development of new technology. Los Angeles city officials are mediating that debate locally now.

Widespread access

Road Runner is by no means unique. For instance, Tele-Communications Inc., which has a merger pending with AT&T, plans to introduce a similar cable-access service called Home to its 121,000 customers in the East Valley and Ventura County in late 1999 or early 2000.

And Road Runner has already been launched in other U.S. markets, gaining more than 160,000 customers. Eventually it will be available to the 27 million homes nationwide that Time Warner serves.

``I think it's the most exciting product we've ever launched,'' said David Auger, vice president and general manager of Time Warner Communications. ``It has the potential of being a bigger business than cable television, and the technology will only improve over the years.''

Steve McMahon, director of Road Runner services in San Diego, said his customer base doubled in less than one year.

``In 1997 we had about 7,000 customers, but since the first of this year the number has jumped to 15,000,'' McMahon said. ``The system is holding up just fine, but we have to keep upgrading as we try and project future growth.

``Our system is always expanding,'' he said.

How it works

Road Runner in the West Valley will use the same lines that bring cable television into homes. Once the cable is inside, it will be split so one line runs to the television and another to a computer.

Data will be delivered through the company's fiber-optic ring, which zigzags through the West Valley, keeping television and Internet signals alive 99.99 percent of the time, said Phillip Klein, Time Warner's vice president of operations.

``Our system is designed like a wagon wheel, so if there is ever a break in the line, the signal will come from another direction,'' Klein said. ``The only times there might be a problem is if we're digging ourselves out of rubble, like the Northridge Earthquake.''

Like cable television, the cable Internet connection is always available. To turn it on, customers simply switch on their computers - eliminating the dial-up process to Internet service providers that bogs down during heavy use periods.

Once users are logged into Road Runner, they'll notice that even complex World Wide Web pages load in seconds rather than minutes, Klein said. And the transition time between pages will come nearly as quickly as changing the channel on a television set.

In fact, a file that would take 5 minutes to download by a conventional telephone modem would take about two seconds via Road Runner, Klein said.

One area where this is expected to have the greatest impact is in the home offices of people who work with video, audio, graphics and demanding computer programs like mechanical design and architecture.

Today's telephone modems have no trouble transmitting text files, but they bog down when tasked with handling video and high-quality sound.

Daneshrad, a UCLA professor of electrical engineering, said cable modem service would allow him to use his campus workstation from home at speeds sufficient enough to make the most of its powerful design software.

Or, he said, entrepreneurs who can not afford this engineering software could get access to it from home by using a cable modem to connect to one of the companies that rent use of the software on a per-hour basis.

Some drawbacks

Like with any system there are some drawbacks. Because the system works like a computer network - or an old telephone party line - the more people that are online at one time, the slower the system becomes.

And speeds can be diminished by the components inside a customer's computer, like older central processing units or video cards.

Still, at its worst speed, Road Runner would be faster than dedicated phone lines, such as integrated services digital network lines, which cost as much as $450 per month.

Time Warner pledges to upgrade its system in areas that grow crowded with users to cut down on the Internet gridlock, Klein said.

Another drawback is that the high-speed cable access is bundled with the Road Runner Internet service. So subscribers must take both - even if they already subscribe to AOL or another service. If a new customer wants to continue using another service, they must pay for it and Road Runner.

Kathy McKiernan, a spokeswoman for America Online, said to require consumers to use Road Runner and Home doesn't make sense for consumers.

``There's a serious problem for consumers that want the speed but can't afford to pay for two services,'' McKiernan said. ``We want to see competition, consumer choice and nondiscriminatory access to broad band.''

Auger said it's a ``silly'' issue because cable modem technology is a fledgling industry. If the cable companies are required to open their networks to other Internet service providers, like telephone companies, they will have little incentive to spend billions of dollars to upgrade their networks, and Los Angeles may lose out on the technology.

``I think this is all a fluke, and I don't think this will happen,'' Auger said. ``Time Warner isn't even going down that road right now, worrying about that kind of regulation.''

Telephone competition

The only real alternative to high-speed cable technology in the same price range is a relatively new, ultra-fast telephone line connection called DSL, or Digital Subscriber Lines.

Joe Peck, product manager for Concentric Network, the area's leading DSL provider, said the company's customer base is small businesses.

The lowest-priced DSL line costs about $149 a month for Internet access at speeds slower than Time Warner's network.

But DSL is a direct connection to the telephone company, rather than the cable modems on a network. And telephone companies have much more experience with the two-way communications that the Internet requires, he said.

``In the past there have been some problems with cable company networks and security. Cable companies have a bad reputation for service in general,'' Peck said.

``Our options right now are pricey to single users at home, but I think the introduction of cable modems will force the phone companies to lower their prices, so we can lower ours.

``In the end the consumer will only come out as a winner,'' he said.

Concentric already is working on lowering prices below $100 a month, Peck said. When that happens, he will start focusing more on the home computer market.

But the cable operators think they have the best connections and Internet service to offer Valley residents.

Time Warner's customized ``Local-Local'' service through Road Runner will offer national content and local features such as traffic reports, area weather and news, quick access to city and county government services and online college registration.

``We're going to be more attractive locally than anyone like AOL,'' Auger said. ``Our service will be customized to the San Fernando Valley.''

INTERNET CABLE ACCESS

Time Warner's Road Runner service, to be launched by June 30, will bring high-speed Internet connections into homes on cables that provide cable television. A splitter box will be installed to separate the television signal and the computer connection.

HOW IT WORKS:

Headend: Services 300,00 households, connects to distribution hubs via coaxial cable lines.

Distribution hub: Services 20,000 households, connects to fiber nodes via fiber optic cables.

Fiber nodes: Services 500 households, connects to computers via cable modem.

Cost:

$44.95 (x) per month for Time Warner cable subscribers

$59.95 (x) per month for Time Warner cable nonsubscribers

(x) Plus $25 installation fee.

ROAD RUNNER SPECIFICATIONS:

Will operate on Time Warner's fiber optic ring network, which ensure 99.99 percent reliability.

The top download transfer rate is about 10 megabaud, more than 100 times as fast as a 28.8K modem.

A 30-second video clip would take 16 seconds to download on Road Runner; seven minutes on an ISDN line; and 33 minutes on a 28.8K modem.

However, the speed varies depending on how many users are simultaneously online, as well as Internet congestion. So the average transfer rate is about 4 to 5 megabaud. As the customer base grows, Time Warner will upgrade its system to handle the load.

Time Warner services 190,000 households in the Los Angeles region, and 60 percent of those customers are in the west San Fernando Valley.

Once connected, customers can use Road Runner's browser, Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Internet Explorer or other software.

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

PHOTO (Color) Phillip Klein stands in the Chatsworth complex where all of Time Warner's cable signals originate.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News

BOX: INTERNET CABLE ACCESS (see text)

Dionisio Munoz/Daily News