posted by SeanusWeanus at 2:18 PM /
On August 8th, the Mt Lebanon Commission passed Resolution R-21-05, which gives the municipality’s consent to the pending transfer of the nonexclusive franchise agreement with the now bankrupt Adelphia Communications Corp to the Comcast Corp. The Commission also voted to extend the current franchise agreement until June 30, 2006.
Adelphia is selling off control of its franchises all over the country to both Time Warner and Comcast for the sum of $12+ billion. In the case of Mt. Lebanon, Comcast will (sometime next year?) be the service provider de jour. Per the language of the resolution, Adelphia is not released from any obligations until the transfer is complete, and Comcast will be bound to the current terms of Mt. Lebanon’s agreement with Adelphia.
Where Comcast has taken over other cable franchises, they often promise no increased service fees, increased channel options, and faster/better service. I have had Comcast in the past, and they weren’t too bad…but that was in a multi-cable company market. In my opinion, any cable company, Adelphia or Comcast, that is allowed to operate with a nearly captive market for time periods of often 10+ years has little incentive to keep its word.
For more information on the nation-wide “gobbling up” of Adelphia, check out the FCC’s Office of General Counsel, Transaction Team site (it has a pretty cool automated timeline of the process).
Adelphia is selling off control of its franchises all over the country to both Time Warner and Comcast for the sum of $12+ billion. In the case of Mt. Lebanon, Comcast will (sometime next year?) be the service provider de jour. Per the language of the resolution, Adelphia is not released from any obligations until the transfer is complete, and Comcast will be bound to the current terms of Mt. Lebanon’s agreement with Adelphia.
Where Comcast has taken over other cable franchises, they often promise no increased service fees, increased channel options, and faster/better service. I have had Comcast in the past, and they weren’t too bad…but that was in a multi-cable company market. In my opinion, any cable company, Adelphia or Comcast, that is allowed to operate with a nearly captive market for time periods of often 10+ years has little incentive to keep its word.
For more information on the nation-wide “gobbling up” of Adelphia, check out the FCC’s Office of General Counsel, Transaction Team site (it has a pretty cool automated timeline of the process).
4 Comments:
GOOD RIDDANCE TO ADELPHIA.
Ahem. Having said that - all is not lost, Mt. Lebonians. We are not under the thumb of the Comcast Empire yet. Oh no, even as we speak, Verizon is making headway at giving the cable co's a run for their money. FIOS, if you are not familiar, is a high-speed broadband service that will eventually extend to cover TV content as well. And it's starting to roll out in Lebo - I'm getting it installed in 2 weeks. Now the question is, who do you love, your cable co or your phone co?
FIOS is not available at my particular address in ML yet...but 15mps for $50 is incredible!
I believe the truer question would be, who do you hate less, your cable co or your phone co?
I too have the Verizon DSL and had hoped to get DirectTV, but b/c of trees and such in my yard, the guy would have had to put in a "mini" tower to install the dish.
So alas, Adelphia installs cable in the house tomorrow. They were actually very sweet and helpful on the phone, but then again I was signing up for service, not the other way around.
Sean, you are 100% correct in restating the question. :)
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