After months of delays, Time Warner Communications finally is rolling out its RoadRunner high-speed, cable-modem Internet service.
Time Warner executives say they have a backlog of about 5,000 who want the service, some of whom signed up on the company's World Wide Web site as long ago as February.
"We have about 500 customers online at the moment, and the demand is high," said Cleon Smith, the general manager for the RoadRunner service locally.
Company officials said last year that the highly anticipated service, which connects users to the Internet using the same wiring as cable television, would be up and running by about March.
But that target date was pushed back to late summer as the company awaited the arrival of newer cable modems that can be used with different cable systems, and it worked out software issues.
Smith also said several sections of the Time Warner service region had to be upgraded before they could be activated, including an area near Compaq Computer Corp., where demand is expected to be high from technically savvy employees who live nearby.
Because there are so few customers online in Houston, Time Warner has not yet seen the phenomenon that has plagued other cable-modem systems: When a large number of people sign up for the service in a given area, the speeds in that area drop.
Smith said Time Warner has engineered its network to avoid that, and additional capacity can be added as needed.
Time Warner Communications provides cable TV service for roughly the western half of the Houston area, while TCI is the provider for the eastern half. Time Warner now manages the TCI area, but cable-modem service won't start rolling out there until the second quarter of next year, a Time Warner spokeswoman said.
Smith said Time Warner has hired a couple of local computer consulting firms to help with the installations, which in some cases involves opening a computer's case and installing an add-on card.
One of those companies is Quick Strike Resources, a small training and consulting firm in The Woodlands.
Rex Griffin, Quick Strike's president, said eight of his 60 employees are currently devoted to RoadRunner installations, and he plans to hire three more to handle the load.
"We did about 90 installs last week, and about 100 this week, and we expect to do maybe 150 next week," Griffin said.
Smith said Time Warner also has trained some of its cable TV technicians to do the installations.
"Our goal is to install 150 cable modems a day, and we are not quite there," he said.
Time Warner gets about 50 sign-ups a day for the service. One customer who called on Friday was told he could not schedule an installation until September or October.
Time Warner is concerned that news that the service is available could launch a "stampede" of installation requests. As a result, there won't be much marketing of RoadRunner for now; Smith said he wants to clear out the backlog.
"I don't think we'll need to do any marketing. I think we can keep the pipeline full with word-of-mouth," he said.
The Time Warner cable modems are capable of speeds of up to 10 megabits a second, which is as fast as a simple corporate computer network, and many times faster than the speediest traditional phone-line modems.
But Joe Laszlo, an analyst in New York with Jupiter Communications -- a market research firm that specializes in online issues -- said most cable-modem customers normally see speeds in the range of 300 to 600 kilobits.
Smith said local customers see speeds between 700 and 800 kilobits.
A kilobit is 1,024 bits of information; a megabit is 1,000 times that amount.
Demand also has been high for the competing high-speed Net access service from Southwestern Bell called ADSL, which is short for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines.
Bell began offering ADSL service in Texas in April. It now has 32,000 ADSL customers in the company's traditional five-state region and in California. Pacific Bell there is owned by SBC Communications, Southwestern Bell's parent company.
"We are anticipating we'll have 200,000 customers by the end of the year," Bell spokesman Jason Hillery said.
Hillery could not say how many Houston customers have the service.
ADSL is a digital high-speed service that works over existing copper phone lines. But it has limitations. Customers who are too far from a central office, or who live in areas that have certain types of phone wiring, can't get the service.
Those who order ADSL today face a 7- to 11-day wait, Hillery said.
"Our goal is to get that closer to the 7-day number," he said. "We've hired 40 new technicians."
Southwestern Bell also faces competition from other telecommunications companies that are offering ADSL service. Covad Communications began offering business and residential ADSL service earlier this month, and NorthPoint Communications now offers ADSL services to businesses here.
Jupiter's Laszlo said his firm projects that there will be more than 3.4 million ADSL users and 6.8 million cable-modem users in the United States by 2002.