While Rome was not built in a day, the evolution of Cable TV, Internet and WiFi service on Catalina has also taken since 1984, when Ralph Morrow started providing cable service when the technology was still young.
Since purchasing the island’s original cable TV company in September of last year, Catalina Broadband Solutions has been working toward fulfilling its goal of expanding its service, Michael Piasecki, the company’s vice president said this week.
While Rome was not built in a day, the evolution of Cable TV, Internet and WiFi service on Catalina has also taken since 1984, when Ralph Morrow started providing cable service when the technology was still young.
Since purchasing the island’s original cable TV company in September of last year, Catalina Broadband Solutions has been working toward fulfilling its goal of expanding its service, Michael Piasecki, the company’s vice president said this week.
Piasecki was confident in January of the company’s prospects for the future, forecasting major upgrades, including those to the new offices at 222 Metropole Ave., across from the former site of the Old Avalon City Hall.
The three-story building was remodeled and transformed into a control center and administrative facility to house the workings of the big plans the company has for providing cable TV on Catalina.
Piasecki said the company would eventually offer between 35 to 40 high definition TV channels, up from 16 it previously provided.
In April, Catalina Broadband also assumed control of the Catalina Computers’ Catalina WiFi service.
“There are a number of network upgrades that we are doing that will enhance the WiFi features and services on the island as well as increasing speeds,” Piasecki said. “As you know, being on an island, network infrastructure and capacity upgrades take longer to complete and we expect to complete a number of the upgrades by year end 2013. We are really excited about some of the new services and features that will be available to the residents of Avalon.”
During the week of the Fourth of July holiday, Internet and some voice services on the island experienced rolling outages for various lengths of time. “Naturally, we cannot speak for other carriers on the island,” Piasecki said. “However in speaking for Catalina WiFi, we experienced some capacity issues that are being addressed with the network upgrades. We expect those to be completed by year end 2013 in order to provide the most reliable service during peak capacity.”
Piasecki said Catalina WiFi did not experience extended outages on the WiFi service but we did have some “periodic capacity issues” during the Fourth of July weekend.
“They will be addressed with the network upgrades that are scheduled for completion by year end 2013,” Piasecki said. “We did not see any network outages on the Catalina WIFI service. However, we did experience network capacity issues that resulted in some periodic network slowdowns; and again those will be addressed when we do the network upgrades.”
Piasecki said Catalina WiFi expects the long-term network infrastructure upgrades to also be completed by the end of this year.
“In the interim we are reconfiguring the network to better load-share across all of the facilities that are currently in place.”
Piasecki said the company said the company would continue to look ahead.
“This is not a two-year venture,” he said.
“We are here for the long term. It may take 20 years for us to realize our goals. We will still be at it after I retire,” he said.
