ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, February 20, 1997            TAG: 9702200011
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1    EDITION: METRO 

WHEN WILL THE BUSY SIGNALS END?

Soon, according to Tricia Primrose, spokeswoman for America Online.

The busy signals started in early December when the nation's largest on-line service changed to a cheaper pricing structure.

AOL - and other on-line services - work sort of like telephone operators, connecting your computer at home, via modem, to the Internet. When 1.2 million new users joined AOL in December and January to take advantage of the price break, the phone lines and modems at AOL became jammed during peak hours.

The plan, Primrose said Monday, is for AOL to improve Roanoke's capacity by 40 percent over the next few months or "hopefully sooner."

"This is what the technical experts believe will take care of the area," she said.

For competitive reasons, she said she can't release AOL's current capacity for the Roanoke region. Capacity means the number of AOL customers who can log onto the service at any given time.

Primrose said Roanoke is near capacity now.

Overall, there are 1.5 million AOL customers in the company's mid-Atlantic region, which includes Virginia, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky.

LENGTH: Short :   30 lines