Brief by Central Staff
Communications – May 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
A couple of years ago, Qwest tried to sell off some of its rural telephone exchanges, and the buyer backed away after looking at the books. Now AT&T Broadband has announced the sale of some of its smaller cable TV systems to Bresnan Communications of White Plains, N.Y.
Among the 41 systems in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana to be sold are those in Salida, Buena Vista, Alamosa, Durango, and Montrose.
Will the $735 million sale, to be completed before Oct. 1, mean more channels and a high-speed internet connection through cable modems?
“It’s too early for us to say anything about a specific system,” said Maureen Huff, manager of communications at Bresnan. “But we do have $300 million committed for improvements to these systems, and improvements typically involve more channels and high-speed internet access.”
The transaction isn’t quite a done deal, she said, since it has to be approved by state and federal regulators, and something could always come up. “But we expect it to go through during the third quarter.”
Local employees and managers will likely keep their jobs, she said.
We don’t know about the other AT&T cable systems, but Salida’s sure has been through plenty of names and owners. It was Heritage Cablevision when we moved here in 1978, and became part of TCI, which in turn became part of AT&T Broadband. Along the way, it dropped CSPAN and, for a while, the Weather Channel and the Denver PBS station — which explains why there’s a satellite dish atop Central world headquarters.
Huff said “we’ll do our best to provide such good cable service that we’ll get that dish off your roof.”
That’s a promise that would go over well in Westcliffe and Silver Cliff, where there’s widespread discontent with the Galaxy cable service that began in 1984. Since then, according to a Wet Mountain Tribune article, “cable television here has been a confusing series of company buyouts and name changes, franchise agreement violations, and complaints about poor service.”
Jerry Gomez, who installs satellite dishes in Custer County, said that by his “rough estimate, about 50% of the homes in Westcliffe and Silver Cliff have satellite.”
