By Richard Meek

Contributing Writer

EDGARD – Residents of the West Bank of St. John the Baptist Parish may finally have high speed Internet service through Comcast.

Or perhaps not.

That confusion was at the center of a grilling by parish council members to Comcast Director of Operations Michael Davenport on Tuesday night during the council meeting in Edgard.

Council members raised a number of concerns and questions to Davenport, who responded to all and even sprung a bit of a surprise, saying all customers will have to obtain converter boxes to continue with Comcast.

Councilman Art Smith began the lengthy discussion by saying Comcast has been making promises since February but quality has not improved.

“The service is unacceptable at this point,” said Smith, who added that he still does not have accessibility to high speed Internet service.

Davenport quickly responded, saying the service went online this past week, but Smith said when he called Tuesday he was told it was not available and was given no date as to its availability

“(The rep) said they don’t’ know when it is going to happen,” Smith said. “That is of 4 p.m. today.”

Davenport appeared surprised and said he would take necessary steps to inform Comcast representatives the service has been launched.

Council members also questioned Davenport on overall quality of service, specifically the lower grade of reception on the west bank compared to the east bank; the inability to broadcast council meetings live from the east bank; dropping of channels and customers being unable to receive credits for when the service is down.

“The real problem is the quality we’re getting,” Smith said. “None of the systems work real well. We are getting all of these promises, keep hearing rhetoric that it’s coming and coming, and we’re telling people it’s coming, then it doesn’t happen.

“Either we get (improved service) or we start looking somewhere else.”

Davenport addressed each issue individually. He said each rep has the authority to issue credits on an individual basis and he has personally written many in the past.

Regarding quality of service, he explained to the council that Comcast has a formula to track complaint rates in a specific area, and the service calls in St. John are “very low. I was surprised to see that.”

“One of the reasons why you don’t have a lot of calls is you can’t get through,” Councilman Lucien Gauff III said. “You sit on the phone so long you hang up,” to which Davenport responded, “That’s fair.”

Davenport said the only channels being dropped were what he called “redundant channels,” which were being duplicated, such as HBO, the Showtime channels, etc. He said some channels have changed numbers, and others have been changed from basic to digital package.

In a statement that appeared to surprise some council members, Davenport then said customers would soon be required to obtain a converter box or else they would be unable to get reception.

He said all of those channels are designed to increase the bandwidth, allowing the company to add more high definition channels.

Davenport emphasized on at least two occasions the converter boxes will be sent to customers free of charge. He said two notices have already been sent notifying customers of the changes and another is on the way.

The converter boxes will be shipped with a self-installation kit, Davenport said.

He added the company is making changes to provide equality of service to all customers on both sides of the river.

“No offense, but this seems as though a good picture as far as what the company is all about,” councilman Lennix Madere said. “But the bottom line is the service is not that good. That’s why we are still complaining about the service, and people are still not getting what they paid for.

For years people on the west bank have been paying the same as the east bank and not getting the same quality.”

“You say you are in competition and the parish is trying to work with the company but there comes a point when you have to put up, and we can see the results we’re paying for. We can’t continue to talk about the same thing over and over again.”

Davenport promised to stay in touch with the council and continue to investigate their areas of concern.