Technical snafus that have Lompoc officials and their broadband experts scratching their heads have caused an indefinite delay of the city's $1.5 million high-speed Internet service.

Lompoc Utilities Director Jim Beck announced the delay Tuesday. The service, which is intended to provide Internet service to city residents with speeds comparable to DSL, was scheduled to be launched Jan. 17, with a Wi-Fi cutting ceremony at City Hall.

The city envisioned a system that has connection speeds of at least 256 kilobytes a second, which would make it possible to download about 1 megabyte off the Internet in six seconds. The service will cost $19.99 a month and the user has an option of buying the wireless router to connect or paying $4.99 a month to rent the equipment.

The system, dubbed Lompoc Connect, was originally slated to be launched in April, but problems with the signal strength and coverage caused longer-than-expected download times and occasionally required more time to connect to the Internet, forcing its postponement, Beck said.

“It's the same problems. We still are not getting the coverage we expected and we are not getting the network performance we expected, it's all over (the city). There is no pattern, ” Beck said.

“It's a little too early to have an answer,” said Mark McKibben, Lompoc's broadband consultant who helped design the system. “Contractors are being very good about this. They are working as a team and are dedicating a lot of resources.

McKibben, Lompoc's Broadband Services Administrator John Greenly and other key players in Lompoc Connect met Tuesday afternoon to discuss the problems.

Beck described the difficulties with the system as “widespread.” The Beta testers around town, who became paying customers of the service, have experienced the problems, and solutions the city has come up with have not worked, he said.

Problems are occurring even in areas where there are no obstructions to the radio signals the system relies on for users to connect.

Accepting subscriptions to Lompoc Connect, which was scheduled to start this week, has also been put on hold.

“We don't want anyone to come on to the network and have a bad experience,” McKibben said. “It's about making sure we don't pull the trigger too soon.”

Mark Abramson can be reached at 737-1057 or mabramson@ lompocrecord.com.

January 11, 2006