Formal consumer complaints about cable service in Los Angeles increased 117% last year compared with 2000, an escalating trend that city regulators expect to continue, according to a preliminary report from the city.

The complaints stemmed from system upgrades, digital transformation, billing and customer service, said Stacy Burnette, a telecommunications regulatory officer for the city's Information Technology Agency. With more upgrades, high-speed-data offerings and consolidations on the horizon, Burnette expects the complaints to continue to rise.

?Whenever there's change, we get a flood of calls for both information and formal complaints,? Burnette said.

The rise in complaints could give the city added leverage in its upcoming negotiations for cable franchise renewals, said Ed Perez, assistant city attorney in charge of the negotiations. All franchise contracts with cable operators in the city are scheduled to expire by the end of this summer. The top franchisees are Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, Adelphia Communications and AT&T Broadband.

?Clearly, if complaints are going up in that amount, which is an alarming increase, I think that it will make [customer service] a prime issue in negotiations,? Perez said. ?If we get locked in for another 15 years, we need to make sure that customer service is improved.?

Formal complaints filed with the city rose to 6,414 last year, up from 2,956 filed in 2000, according to the agency's preliminary report on annual customer service statistics. In 1999, Los Angeles residents filed 2,767 formal complaints. Calls for information to the agency also rose 45% to 14,823 last year, up from 10,212 in 2000 and 4,792 in 1999.

Burnette said that while the agency would not release further details about individual operators until the annual report is complete, AT&T Broadband chalked up the most complaints last year.

AT&T Broadband spokeswoman Patti Rockenwagner explained that the operator started to change its billing software last year, affecting 1.4 million accounts. While this conversion was geared to improve customer service, the change created some problems, prompting the increase in calls, she noted.

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