The Cable Is Coming to Abilene

 When I was a boy growing up in a rural part of the Big Country of West Texas in the 1950s, our one TV station had no live network programming for several years after it first signed on the air. The reason was the AT&T line (a coaxial cable) carrying network television service extended no farther westward than Dallas-Fort Worth. No football, no basketball, no baseball, no network news. When construction started to expand the service to the Abilene market, the station, KRBC-TV, began running a film promotional announcement with the words "the cable is coming to Abilene."

I was reminded of that line yesterday when we had a Google Fiber hanger placed on our front door here in southwest Austin.

Google Fiber hanger, promising free installation, unlimited data with no throttling or extra charges, more than enough Wi-Fi with no buffering or interruptions, TV and telephone service. Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash. Door hanger scan.

Austin has always been a limited-choice television market. When the Federal Communications Commission assigned over-the-air channels across America, the city received only one VHF channel, channel 7 (a time when television sets received only VHF). As cable television expanded nationwide, Austin got cable TV from a company owned by the licensee of channel 7.

The local cable TV company was eventually sold and evolved to become part of the Time Warner cable cabal. Limited regulation disappeared, service got worse and prices went up. Grande Communications installed a competing cable TV service in small sections of the city but was never competition for Time Warner. In recent years, Time Warner became Spectrum, and service seemed to improve, but without high-speed internet service.

So, consumers in Austin were excited by the announcement of internet giant Google entering the TV cable business with high-speed service and our city would be one of their second-tier test markets. The prices promised were much cheaper and service projected to be much faster.

As part of this plan, Google Fiber was assured for our neighborhood more than three years ago. We are in the area Google Fiber designated for first-stage construction when the company began offering its high-speed service. Construction started in the east, moving westward. But when Google Fiber reached our subdivision, expansion was placed on hold.

Getting information from Google Fiber about the reason for the construction delay or a new timeline was impossible. Inquiries went unanswered and deposits by neighbors indicating a interest in signing up for the service were eventually refunded as the delay was protracted.

While waiting for Google Fiber, we chose Spectrum internet with streaming of local channels and seven other cable-only channels. Despite the clunky way of changing channels, recording channels, no efficient way to skip commercials and occasional buffering due to bandwidth, we have been reasonably satisfied. Until this week. The night of the presidential inauguration, it was impossible to use the streaming service for live TV because of buffering problems. 

So, the Google Fiber door hanger was welcome news. The cable is coming to Abilene.

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