City hears telecom service update

Teresa Williams

June 15, 2009 07:56 pm

— THOMASVILLE — Peggy Maddox, telecommunications account executive for the City of Thomasville, said services continue to connect more area customers.
“I think what keeps us growing is our customer service, the option to have all services billed on one statement and our competitive rates,” she said Monday.
Maddox gave her annual report to the Thomasville City Council at a recent workshop.
The Telecommunications Marketing Department is in charge of sales of dedicated telecom circuits, or, fiber circuit that connects a customer between two or more locations or to the Internet, as well as back office support for telephone orders and the sale of Commercial CNS Broadband Internet.
“We’ve seen an increase in circuits from 84 in 2006 to 96 in 2008,” Maddox said Monday. “We see use mainly with businesses that need this type of service as residential customers have no need for that amount of bandwidth. This is a good service because of the amount of data that can be transferred at one time and it is very secure.”
Commercial CNS Internet has gone up approximately $1,000 in monthly revenues from $27,254 in May 2008 to $28,283 in May 2009, she said.
“I am pleasantly surprised to see the commercial number improve,” Councilman Max Beverly said at the workshop. “It is not by much but, under the circumstances, the fact that it is up at all is good.”
Maddox’s department is not in charge of residential telephony, but does keep data on the service.
“We had 2,073 customers on our phone switch May 5, 2008, and now have 4,390 total customers,” she said.
These include customers from Thomasville, Cairo, Moultrie, Camilla, Pelham and Baconton.
“Baconton is significant, given that is 50 miles or more away,” Mayor David Lewis said at the workshop.
The plan is to roll out commercial telephony by mid-fall, Maddox said Monday.
“We had to send a commercial tariff, or description of the phone service a commercial customer may need with the rates, to the Public Service Commission,” she said. “Approval is still pending.”
The Times-Enterprise will have more on the new service when it is ready to launch, as well as an update on how the residential telephony service is faring in an upcoming edition.