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Cox Communications announced this morning it is raising its rates on cable and Internet service in 17 south Louisiana parishes, including all of Acadiana. In the same press release, it announced the launch of nine new high definition channels, as well as increased Internet speeds.

Acadiana customers who subscribe to Basic Cable will see a $2.58 monthly price increase. Those customers who subscribe to Expanded Basic will see an additional $.42 price increase, for a total of $3.00. Certain premium services will increase $1.00 per service. Cox High Speed Internet customers subscribing to Starter, Value, Preferred or Premier can expect a price increase between $2.00 and $3.00, depending on the level of service they subscribe to. There will not be a price increase on the Cox Ultimate Tier. Changes to Internet pricing are only for residential customers, not Cox Business customers.The new rates go into effect Dec. 8, 2009.

In the press release, Cox Senior Vice President and General Manager Jacqui Vines states, “As much as we try to absorb costs, we have seen a 78 percent increase in the retransmission fees for Basic and Expanded Basic service, as well as over a 10 percent increase in programmer fees to entities like Disney, ESPN, Fox and NBC Universal. With these recent changes, most of our video customers will see a rate increase of less than 6 percent.”

Along with the new rates, customers will see an upgrade in service. Cox will launch nine new HD channels bringing the Acadiana market total to 73. New additions include:  ESPNews HD (ch. 738), Investigation Discovery HD (ch. 749), msnbc HD (ch. 764), Tennis Channel HD (ch. 784), Disney XD HD (ch. 786), BBC America HD (ch. 787), Fuse HD (ch. 788), The Movie Channel HD (ch. 795), and More Max HD (ch. 797). In addition to the HD launches, Acadiana customers will also receive three new digital channels: CSPAN3 (ch. 143), Sportsman Channel (ch. 258), and The Word (ch. 271), as well as additions to Cox's OnDemand listings.

With the changes, some channels will move within tiers and into new service levels. New channel line-up cards will be sent to customer homes, and will be available at local service centers and on-line at www.cox.com.

Cox also announced speed increases across the four most popular tiers of high-speed Internet:

    * Economy customers will migrate into the new Starter high speed package. Download speed for Starter customers will increase from 768Kbps to 1Mbps
    * Value customers will migrate to Essential. Download speed for Essential customers will be increasing from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps
    * Speed for Preferred High Speed Internet will increase from 10 Mbps to 12 Mbps
    * Speed for Premier High Speed Internet will increase from 20 Mbps to 22 Mbps.

“Cox has annually invested millions of dollars in new technology in order to reliably deliver to our urban and rural customers the nation’s best cable, Internet and phone products,” said Vines. “Because of these investments, we are able to add more value to our existing products, expand our HD and Digital line and increase speeds for our four most popular Internet packages.”