As people began working from home and holding remote meetings beginning in March of 2020, Cox Communications began to experience a load on its network it had never had before, according to Michael Cripes, Government Relations Manager for Cox Communications.

Cripes described the situation in a presentation to the Town Council at its March 16 regular session.

“This was network consumption like we have never seen before,” Cripes said.

He said Cox began looking at several methods to address the situation and enhance network capacity. The company took one step in Fountain Hills late last year with a “node split” within a specific service area of town.

A node split, Cripes explained, doubles the capacity of the network and eliminates congestion.

He said this is a somewhat complex process as it requires planning, permitting, construction, coordination with the town, customer notification and planned outages.

While outages were generally about two to four hours, it was important to let customers know what was going on in advance, especially with so many depending on the network.

There are a couple of other processes that can be taken that do not require construction. Network enhancements improve spectrum efficiency by eliminating node congestion and adding bandwidth. This work can be completed remotely by engineers and does not require construction.

Cripes said Cox will add new technology this summer to improve bandwidth and will not require construction.

Cripes responded to some questions by council members dealing with service and specific complaints by local customers.

He said Cox is looking at what is needed to provide customers with the fastest speed the company has available.