Cable will come to an end in Monroe early next year

No more cable

At last week’s City Council meeting in Monroe, the council unanimously granted a request from the city’s telecommunications operation to shut down the municipal cable service early next year.

According to Mike McGuire, the city’s telecommunications director, only 10 percent of the city’s telecommunications customers maintain cable service. Of those 709 customers, according to information presented to the council, 394 have fiber services available, and another 111 are in the Good Hope area, where they can convert to fiber service.

Also according to McGuire, the remaining 204 customers are in Monroe Housing Authority residences, and the authority has not allowed installation of fiber services.

The city’s cable plant, last updated in 1999, is getting harder to maintain, and the city has been concentrating for multiple years on installing fiber infrastructure to provide more reliable service to customers.