cableco

M&A Rumor Mill

May 4, 2015

One big rumor is that Salesforce is being acquired. Google, Microsoft and even Oracle have all been mentioned. Although Oracle has said they will profit more if someone else buys Salesforce.

By the way, just the rumor made a lot of folks at Salesforce extra money as the stock bumped up 10% on the rumor.

Posted in cableco, fiber, mergers

A reader sent me a story about the difficulty of adding the voice mobility package to the company's TWCBC voice service. "Over the past 7 days, I have put in 3-4 hours in working trying to get this simple feature added and have spoken with 3 sales reps, a retention rep, and several others in other departments." Frustration with the process and the company is natural in telecom. This isn't TV any more. But then that is why TWC was for sale.

Posted in agents, cableco, telco, telecommunications

News Tidbits Part 2917

April 27, 2015

Windstream's telecommunications network assets were spun off into a REIT named Communications Sales and Leasing, Inc. that is trading on Nasdaq as symbol CSAL today.

Comcast removed itself from the $45B acquisition of TWC. Both the DOJ and the FCC were opposed to it. Comcast is facing other issues, like cord-cutting and the demise of the pay-cable-TV model that it was built on.

Posted in IPTV, cableco, fiber, mergers

Charter Ditches Wholesale

April 22, 2015

Charter made some moves recently including bidding from Bright House Networks, bidding for TWC and re-branding its business services. It lost the TWC bid to Comcast. The BHN bid is contingent on the TWC purchase. The re-branding is a page out of Cablevision: its business services are called Optimum and its Metro Ethernet services are branded as Lightpath.

Posted in cableco

The Race to Gigabit is About Business

April 15, 2015

The cable companies racing to Gigabit networks isn't about delivering ultra-fast broadband to consumers. The Gigabit announcements get them good PR in DC, where the largest MSOs are waiting for approval for acquisitions (Comcast for TWC; Charter for Bright House). Comcast, as the largest MSO, has a poor reputation for customer service and for Net Neutrality. The Comcast-Verizon squeeze on Netflix was probably the number 1 reason the FCC received millions of public comments and laid down the law.

Posted in CLEC, ISP, broadband, cableco, fiber, telco

Top Tampa ISPs Sell Out

March 31, 2015

Last month, Verizon announced that it was selling wireline assets of VZT in Florida, California and Texas to Frontier. Today, Charter announced a deal to buy Bright House Networks for about $5K per subscriber or about 2.8x revenue. [Charter is only buying 73% of BHN, which may be just to take care of the hanging chad that is BHN in the TWC deal.]

Tampa Bay was the market that Verizon tested FiOS head-to-head against cable.

Posted in ISP, broadband, cableco, mergers

What's With the MSO Consolidation?

March 26, 2015

Charter was the first company to make a play for TWC. Now reports are in that Charter is chasing Bright House. Comcast is still waiting for its three-way deal with TWC and Charter to pass regulatory. The FCC paused the clock again today.

Posted in FCC, cableco, mergers, video

At the FCC

February 24, 2015

While a lot is happening at the FCC, I haven't written much about it. My focus has been elsewhere - and most readers couldn't care less about regulatory. That said the USF Reform is still going on, including E-Rate program changes, Rural Broadband experiments, and CAF funding fights (between WISPs and ILECs). The AWS-3 spectrum auction had 4 big winners: VZW, ATT, DISH and the FCC coffers to the tune of $40 billion.

Posted in FCC, ISP, Internet, broadband, cableco, duopoly, economy, politics

Cable Will Win

February 16, 2015

The Telecompetitor spends a lot of space on Chattanooga's muni network - as if it was the perfect model for a Gigabit network. Two problems with it: (1) it cost taxpayers literally millions of dollars via bonds and federal grants and (2) very few people buy Gigabit services from them. It is rare that a muni network will do well. UTOPIA, Wilson's Greenlight, a couple in Florida, ECB-Chatt and Lafayette's LUS are the ones I paid attention to over the years.

Posted in CLEC, broadband, cableco, fiber, telco, wireline

Do Network Upgrades Matter

February 11, 2015

AT&T is upgrading some U-Verse areas to 75 Mbps. Is this in response to the new FCC definition of broadband?

Indiana Fiber Network is upgrading to 100G. IFN is owned by 20 LECs in the state that put 3500 route miles of fiber in the ground touching about 4000 buildings.

Big upgrades - are you in Indiana?

Posted in broadband, cableco, duopoly, fiber, wireline

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