Telecom & Cable Survey 1998 Summary

SUMMARY OF RESULTS FOR

In the fall of 1998, a survey was conducted to assess the attitudes of Austin residents regarding the quality of service and programming of Time Warner cable television. Additionally, the survey sought to track Austin trends in the use of advanced telecommunications services, computers, and related technologies.

The survey, designed by Telecommunications and Regulatory Affairs, contained 45 questions and was mailed to 2500 randomly selected Austin households (addresses supplied by Survey Sampling, Inc.). Five hundred and sixty-three surveys were returned for a response rate of 22.5%. Of the survey respondents, 76% were Time Warner Cable subscribers, 65% had at least one computer in the home, and close to 48% subscribe to a home Internet access provider.

A small majority of subscribers expressed a general level of satisfaction (52%) with the programming offered by Time Warner Cable. A majority of subscribers, however, expressed dissatisfaction with Time Warner's monthly rates for service. Over 72% of subscribers felt the monthly rate charges were unreasonable.

Cable subscribers showed a strong interest in news programs viewing, on average, 6 hours of news and information programs per week. This followed the average viewing for entertainment programming at 7.8 hours per week. Educational programming was the next popular viewing type for subscribers (4.5 hours per week), followed by sports (4.4 hours per week) and community or local programming (0.7 hours per week).

City of Austin Government programming was viewed by over 20% of subscribers occasionally or frequently. Community programming was viewed as follows:

Cable Service

A majority of subscribers (60.1 %) phoned Time Warner within the past year to request information or report problems. Subscriber satisfaction with Time Warner responsiveness was expressed as follows:

RANGE OF SATISFACTION

Very Responsive Not Responsive

Subscribers’ greatest dissatisfaction was with responsiveness to outages (26.5%), followed by dissatisfaction with responsiveness to installation and service (22.8%).

A majority of respondents (65%) reported having at least one computer at home. Of those with a home PC, 91% have a modem and 47.6% subscribe to an online service for Internet access. Austin residents who reported subscribing to an online service spend, on average, $17.96 per month on online access.

A strong majority of respondents (62.1%) were aware that Austin Free-Net provided Internet access via public terminals in libraries and other locations. Those respondents utilizing public access to the Internet spent 12.3 hours per month at public terminals.

A majority of respondents (81.1%) have never accessed the City of Austin's web site, which suggests the City needs to better market information and services available on City Connection.

A surprising number of Austin residents expressed an interest in high-speed data service with close to 23% planning to add cable modem service and over 50% interested in subscribing. For the less visible Digital Subscriber Line data service, only 4.6% planned to subscribe--though close to 50% expressed an interest in subscribing.