Word: tci
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WASHINGTON: When AT&T and cable giant Telecommunications Inc.(TCI) announced merger plans last month, FCC chairman William Kennard jumped right in and gave his blessing. The merger promised new technologies and new conveniences for customers. So why has Congress been holding hearings on the merger when its members should be out campaigning or something? Two words: Ralph Nader...
...TIME Daily Washington correspondent Declan McCullagh says that the ageless consumer watchdog demanded that Kennard hold hearings on the grounds that "the addition of AT&T's muscle would strengthen TCI's government-permitted monopoly on cable rather than give consumers more choice." Notes McCullagh: "The argument is that the combination would create an 800-lb. gorilla that the Bells couldn't compete against." But Nader, says McCullagh, is missing the point. The Baby Bells currently aren't competing against anyone, not even each other. Allowing AT&T/TCI to compete in the local phone game would encourage the Bells...
...their deal is approved, Malone and Armstrong hope the merger will be a kind of business Viagra for AT&T's famously languid corporate culture. The two say their merged companies could start phasing in these hot new services swiftly. About 25% of TCI's systems will have the capacity to carry two-way traffic by the end of this year, with 95% scheduled to be ready by the end of 2000. At the same time, AT&T plans to spend some $400 per household to install the digital set-top boxes that will serve as portals to high-speed...
...that to be true, AT&T may have to convince TCI customers that their cable company is no longer the same one many came to hate. "Cable companies come up dead last in terms of the choice that a consumer would make for an integrated provider of communications services," says Berge Ayvazian, executive vice president of the Yankee Group, a Boston consulting firm. "And TCI, among cable operators, is not very highly rated in terms of customer satisfaction, although it has improved over the past couple of years...
Armstrong must still contend with those ornery Baby Bells. Even if all 33 million households in neighborhoods that TCI serves were to buy AT&T local service, the company would remain shut out of two-thirds of the country's homes. Armstrong hopes to make inroads with a so-called fixed wireless system that AT&T is developing to deliver household service through cellular technology. But in the end, he acknowledges, as many as 25% of U.S. homes will remain beyond AT&T's reach--unless it can strike deals with the Bells and other local phone companies...