Phonoscope Communications is a

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

and

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

provider with corporate headquarters in

Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. The company's infrastructure spans eight counties and reaches distant locations such as Baytown,

Galveston Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Gal ...

, Freeport,

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, Richmond-Rosenberg,

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Texas City Texas City is a city in Galveston County in the U.S. state of Texas. Located on the southwest shoreline of Galveston Bay, Texas City is a busy deepwater port on Texas's Gulf Coast, as well as a petroleum-refining and petrochemical-manufacturing ...

and

Willis, Texas Willis is a city in Montgomery County, Texas, United States, located eight miles north of Conroe in north central Montgomery County. The city began to develop in 1870 after what is now the Union Pacific Railroad built track through the area. As a p ...

History

Lee Cook, along with Houston banker Jesse Jones and William T. Carter, founded Phonoscope in 1953. Cook reportedly outlived his co-founders. Phonoscope established a two-way

videotelephony Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Enc ...

system in 1962 for

Galveston Independent School District Galveston Independent School District is a school district headquartered in Galveston, Texas, United States. In 2013, the school district was rated as having "Met Standard" by the Texas Education Agency. Catchment area Galveston ISD takes st ...

, connecting eight elementary schools to the district's administration building using coaxial cable. In 1989, Phonoscope completed a large scale fiber optic ring for Ethernet transport in Houston, encompassing all the major central business districts. The company sold their residential cable television business to OpTel Inc. in 1997, but later began to serve residential customers again. Phonoscope continues to work with local area school districts, having since 2014 entered successful bids to provide dark fiber and

10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE, 10GbE, or 10 GigE) is a group of computer networking technologies for transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of 10 gigabits per second. It was first defined by the IEEE 802.3ae-2002 standard. Unlike previous Et ...

service to the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District.

Services

Phonoscope offers a Metro Ethernet fiber network in the Houston area. Services such as wireless backhaul are available on the network. Phonoscope Cable offers

digital cable Digital cable is the distribution of cable television using digital data and video compression. The technology was first developed by General Instrument. By 2000, most cable companies offered digital features, eventually replacing their previo ...

, high speed internet, and digital phone service to some residential customers in Houston. Phonoscope Fiber offers fiber optic based services to some MDU's (i.e., apartments) in Houston.

Technology

Phonoscope has adopted equipment in order to accommodate the use of

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. I ...

Controversies

The company incorrectly charged customers sales tax for Internet services for a period of two years after such charges were made illegal. Customers have been promised a refund.

References

External links

Phonoscope website

Phonoscope Cable website
Companies based in Houston {{US-telecom-company-stub