``Starting now, your cable company will exceed your expectations.'' That's a line from a recent advertisement by Comcast, which last year bought up AT&T Broadband, Boston's principal cable TV provider.

Comcast sure isn't setting a high bar for itself. After years of annoyance, the only things Bostonians expect from their cable company are high prices, antiquated technology and the worst customer service department imaginable.

How bad is it? Let's start with the notorious A/B trunks. Depending on the day, one trunk usually delivers an OK picture while the other looks like one is watching through an Iraqi sandstorm. Channels randomly cut off for no explicable reason. The A/B system - in use almost nowhere else in the nation - is incompatible with modern TVs, so one can forget about things like picture-in-picture or time shifting with a Tivo.

On top of that, customer service has been execrable. Almost everyone has a horror story: After a half-hour wait, you find you're speaking with someone in Florida or, worse, Canada (``So you can't see Disney, eh?'') who has no sympathy for your plight and little ability to fix your problem.

But it gets worse. While Boston struggles to simply get a decent television picture, the rest of the country has been passing it by. Most places have for years had broad-band Internet access through their cable. Digital television and telephone service are usually part of the package as well.

And it's not like we have any choice.

The only other cable company, RCN, has a limited presence in the city (and, with a loss last year of $1.6 billion, many wonder whether it will be around). And although satellite services such as DirectTV are popular in the suburbs, it's hard to set up the dishes in densely packed, urban communities.

Things were so bad that in 1997, an angry Boston Finance Commission urged the city not to renew its contract with Cablevision (AT&T Broadband's predecessor), saying the company had ``failed to honor the commitments'' it made. Cablevision then promised to spend $160 million in upgrades and said that within a year most of its customers would have Internet access and telephone service.

And nothing changed. In every subsequent year, Cablevision (and then AT&T Broadband) made new promises and set new deadlines. The companies missed every one.

All of which is why Comcast's commercials, featuring Lance Armstrong along with promises of a new consumer focus and dramatic improvements in service, simply seem unbelievable.

But maybe not.

For while Bostonians have suffered, things have in fact been changing.

In the Boston metro area, the old cable (back when it was originally installed, the A/B system was thought to be cutting edge - sort of like 8-track players would transform the music world) has been replaced with fiber-optic lines. Paul D'Arcangelo, who heads up all of Comcast's Boston operations, figures that 94 percent of all homes now have the new lines. Installing the rest, he says, is largely a matter of gaining permission to access residential buildings, something that has often proved difficult in Boston's downtown neighborhoods.

In addition, the company has reorganized the way it delivers services. Various departments at Cablevision used to manage operations for an entire region (thus, for example, the engineering department handled all engineering issues in New England). Now, operations are broken up by geography, meaning that someone - in Boston's case, D'Arcangelo - actually pays heed to individual communities.

Even better for Bostonians, Comcast has centralized its operations in Allston. It's gone on a major hiring campaign and is shedding its outsourced customer service reps. Comcast managers say that it now takes less than 30 seconds to answer customer calls (although one still needs to wade through a lengthy voice menu). And those service reps, now based locally, are better able to solve problems quickly.

The upshot of all this is that cable in Boston has taken a giant leap forward. If customers want, they can now get Internet access, digital television, High Definition TV and - very soon - the coolest product of all, video-on-demand. (something like a built-in VCR; it may change completely the way we watch television.)

Even better, the old A/B system is gone.

Gee-whiz, it sounds exciting.

So what's the catch? To get all of these features, a customer has to upgrade to digital service. And that upgrade, unfortunately, is not free: At a minimum, it's another $9.95 a month on top of the existing standard cable bill of $38.60.

Nevertheless, while those costs are high (and to those of us who remember free, over-the-air broadcasting, they seems absolutely unreasonable), Comcast's prices compare closely to everyone else, including satellite providers.

Still, I wouldn't say I'm persuaded. The legacy of Cablevision is just too awful to forget quickly. But Comcast makes a good case for itself. If it really does deliver, I may never turn off the TV again.

Tom Keane can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.