LEWISTON – Oxford Networks plans to offer its services to another 1,000 residential customers beginning in November.

The company is in the middle of its second phase expansion, completing a wiring project up Main Street in Lewiston to Mollison Way and up Center Street in Auburn to Turner Street.

“The next component is the residential build, and we hope to have some of those customers ready to turn on beginning Nov. 17,” said Mike Tompkins, director of sales and marketing for Oxford Networks.

The company plans to extend its fiber-optic network, offering cable television, high-speed Internet and telephone service, south on Lisbon Street to Westminster Street and along the Lewiston side of the Androscoggin River.

That work should wrap up by mid-December.

The Twin Cities area is one of the few regions in the United States to have two competing cable companies. Oxford Networks began offering its cable TV services in 2003 and currently has 700 residential customers between Goff Hill in Auburn and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.

The company plans to have both cities completely wired by 2008.

“It’s really more of a regulatory process than anything else,” Tompkins said. The company needs permission from the Maine Public Utilities Commission to attach its wires to area telephone poles, and that application process can take between six and eight months.

“But the actual construction work goes pretty quickly,” Tompkins said.

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