RCN Sold For $1.2 Billion No word on what, if anything will change for RCN users... Tipped by lilhurricane 
Cable overbuilder RCN has had a long road since being founded in 1993, which included (if you lived in NYC at the time and remember) posters and subway ads promising a "revolution" in telecommunications. What they delivered was a fairly decent service judging from our user reviews, though the company stumbled in and out of bankruptcy in 2004, and has struggled in a sector ruled by bigger outfits. Today the company issued a statement saying they'd been acquired by ABRY Partners for $1.2 billion. If you're shopping around for a cable company, and have say -- $1.5 billion to spend -- RCN has given you an opening: Under the terms of the merger agreement, RCN may solicit proposals from third parties for 40 days through April 14, 2010. There can be no assurances that this process will result in an alternative transaction. RCN does not intend to disclose developments with respect to this solicitation process unless and until its Board of Directors has made a decision. RCN currently offers service in select portions of New York, Boston, Chicago, Lehigh Valley, PA, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. There's no word yet on precisely what this means for RCN customers, but we've contacted the company for comment and we'll of course keep you posted. The deal will of course need regulatory approval and won't close until the second half of this year. RCN users interested in talking about the deal should head into our RCN forum.
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  MPScanPremium
join:2001-08-24
Boston, MA
1 edit | I like 'em... I have RCN in Boston. No phone, but rock solid 10m/768k internet that never goes down. All the cable channels except premium channels on two HD cable boxes in my house.
$93.33 per month. That includes all taxes, fees, everything. Never goes up or down a penny, and it's not a "hook you for 6 or 12 months promo", that's the real price. I think it went up from around $89 two years ago.
That's about 1/3 less than I would pay with Comcrap, at least.
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Organized religion is for those who need it because they don't have enough faith in themselves. | |
|  | | | Re: I like 'em... said by MPScan:I have RCN in Boston. No phone, but rock solid 10m/768k internet that never goes down. All the cable channels except premium channels on two HD cable boxes in my house. $93.33 per month. That includes all taxes, fees, everything. Never goes up or down a penny, and it's not a "hook you for 6 or 12 months promo", that's the real price. I think it went up from around $89 two years ago. That's about 1/3 less than I would pay with Comcrap, at least. When I still had dial up, I started with a company called Erol's. They started off as a TV repair shop and then sold TV and VCRs (way back in the 70s and 80s.) They then started a video rental business that was BIG in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area. So successful that Blockbuster bought them up. After some downtime, the same guy started an ISP that was dial up and had great prices ($7.99/month 2 year contract.) What I really liked about them was they always had an up to date service and outage page that was very useful.
RCN/Starpower bought them out and the service turned to crap and prices went up. | |
| | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | I hate to be the one to say this... but if you were paying 1/3 less than 'comcrap' ... which is a good price to the customer.. and RCN is in bankruptcy, it kinda does say something abut RCN doesn't it?
There is another story posted today about 100meg to 100 million but it's not going to fix anything until the duopoly is "fixed".... RCN is pretty much something to prove why you can't have that many carriers in one place.. the market won't handle it.. It's too expensive to run a system when you only have so many customers to grab.
I think RCN tried to keep their prices low in order to gain customers. This also brings up a point as well.. someone here tried to fight me that "price is king".. if that was the case, over builders like RCN would kill the other provider of cable or phone - but it doesn't always.
RCN probably didn't charge enough for their service. They could have gone up in price to remain sustainable WHILE keeping up the competition with providing GOOD customer service, etc. (There is more than one way to be competitive other than price)
I guess what I'm saying is that RCN's lower prices do play into why they were in bankruptcy before.. and the fact they needed to just sell out is also a good sign of a bad business model in an economy that won't support it.
The reason why phone competes with cable and cable competes with phone is because those two companies already had room on established networks. Try to add another network and you will see a bit of an upset, but that only lasts for so long before one fails. | |
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 DaveDudeNo Fear
join:1999-09-01
New Jersey
kudos:1 | Kicked out of jersey RCN was kicked out of NJ for failing to upgrade there system. It was possibly the only system in the state that still had one way cable modems, and no ppv at all. | |
| | Reviews:
 ·WOW Internet and..
·Time Warner Cable
1 edit | Re: Kicked out of jersey kicked out or the cities refused to renew agreements? there is a difference really. The difference would be if they were forced out they can't do business there for usually X amount of time. Refused to renew agreements? happened a lot. And thats when the company is given XX amount of time to upgrade and or they won't renew and have to sell the system(s). The cable company in my home town was like this. We had 40 channels up until about '01. No digital NOTHING. NO cable modems, HBO was run off some splitter that they installed on the pole and all. The city told them they had to upgrade or sell out and they refused to upgrade and sold out to TWC.
But now as far as force upgrades, we can forget abut those as the state has taken that away from the cities.
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www.two-pugs.com www.twopugsbrand.com | |
| | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: Kicked out of jersey Two things..
1) They prolly didn't "refuse" to upgrade, they prolly didn't have the money.
2) Just becuase states have taken over some franchise agreements (in some cases I agree, and in other cases I see it as a bad thing) doesn't necessarily mean that the states won't require a level of service. I DO, however, see it as a VERY ineffective way to manage providers as people on the state level tend to not care about the local areas in which people live, AND they're so small and cover so much they become in effective at what they do.
There IS actually a lesson from all this.. and I don't see why people can't understand this when they cry for the feds to "take care of something".. the fact is that the higher up you go in government to take care of something in your own back yard, your voice only gets harder to hear.
Smaller government is much better in many ways. I'd rather have my state or county or city in my back yard LONG before the federal government any day! | |
| | | | | | | | Reviews:
·WOW Internet and..
·Time Warner Cable
| the cable company that sold out to TWC DID have the money. They owned a well known regional office supply company and a Radio Station. both on AM and FM. When they refused to upgrade their CaTV network and sold it, they sold EVERYTHING and moved out of the city. It was a well known issue in the city; Fremont, Ohio. The debate with the owners went on for years even though TWC tired to gain access and overbuild but that was before exclusive agreements were illegal as far as that goes.
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www.twopugsbrand.com ONLINE STORE NOW ONLINE! up to 50% SRP of Happy Tails Spa products. | |
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| | I remember the RCN ads in the subway I believe parts of my town were served by RCN. I think they became Patriot Media and now it's Comcast. | |
|  ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4
3 edits |  ABRY merge RCN in N.E. with Grande Communications Texas ....
ABRY is a leveraged buyout specialist meaning they buy things with OPM. They currently own Grande Communications which provides internet access in parts of Texas.
RCN: New York, Boston, Chicago, Lehigh Valley, PA, Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
Grande Communications: portions of Austin, Corpus Christi, suburban northwest Dallas, Midland, Odessa, San Antonio, San Marcos and Waco.
Atlantic Broadband, an ABRY subsidiary, is the 15th largest cable operator in the United States. The privately held company is headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts, with over 700 employees and 286,000 customers located in four operating regions: central Pennsylvania, Miami Beach, Maryland/Delaware, and Aiken, SC. Additional information is available at »www.atlanticbb.com.
They appear to be building a cable empire. Maybe they would like to buy parts of Qwest or some more cable companies for their internet properties.  | |
| | | | Re: ABRY merge RCN in N.E. with Grande Communications Texas .... sounds like WOW could be on the list of them buying or any other small cable company. But yah that would be WOW- they don't even service their home town anymore. What a joke!
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www.two-pugs.com www.twopugsbrand.com | |
| | | tvdrew
join:2008-08-20
Washington, DC | Re: ABRY merge RCN in N.E. with Grande Communications Texas .... They bought WOW in 1999 and sold it in 2006. | |
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| iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| Interesting...
I wouldn't think that there would be a merger though. Grande and Atlantic haven't merged. Seems like ABRY is just buying the cable systems and sitting on them...Grande has lowered prices for triple play deals but otherwise just sat there on the speed front for awhile now.
Then again, until recently they had no need to do anything more; 12/1 for $50 isn't great, but it's about in line with what the competitors are charging for similar service. | |
| | | tvdrew
join:2008-08-20
Washington, DC Reviews:
·RCN CABLE
| Re: ABRY merge RCN in N.E. with Grande Communications Texas .... Yeah, the model private equity firms usually use is buy, improve, sell, all within a few years. The investors who supply the equity want to get their money out and invest it again in something else.
In theory they could package up two separate systems and sell them together, but the efforts at integrating the two might not make that worth it. | |
| | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: ABRY merge RCN in N.E. with Grande Communications Texas .... Yeah, RCN and Grande are totally different in terms of bandwidth blends and other structures. RCN is looking toward D3 whereas Grande has done nothing to that effect yet...
That said, ABRY could pull an Alltel and sell RCN to Comcast and Grande to TWC. I'm sure the respective carriers would love to have that competition out of the way. | |
| | | | |  djdanskaRudie32Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Wilmington, NC
kudos:4
 ·T-Mobile US
| Re: ABRY merge RCN in N.E. with Grande Communications Texas .... Had them when i lived in the city. Took a few weeks to get internet working but once it was, it was awesome! Had a decent motorola box with killer guide software and TONS of hd channels. (Too bad i did not have a hd tv at the time, but having dolby digital output was awesome!)
Tech support was very good. I HATED how i had to pay them something like $2.00 to pay my bill online though. Was the only one to offer me 20 meg internet when comcast only went to 16 megs i think at the time.
If i could get them again, i might. I am tempted to get att uverse though but they wanted over 400 dollars for deposit. (Comcast and directv wanted none)
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The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult. The day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.
Alden Nowlan | |
| | | | | | | You'd have to add a 3rd company in that mix if you want to pull an Alltel. Remember not all of the markets are going to VZW or ATT.
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www.twopugsbrand.com ONLINE STORE NOW ONLINE! up to 50% SRP of Happy Tails Spa products. | |
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Whip
join:2009-01-23
Califon, NJ | Nice! Cable service AND a hearty roast beef sangwich. | |
|  bmb
@twtelecom.net | Chicago I remember when the came to Chicago 10 years ago, I couldn't wait to get them. At the time, AT&T (now ComCrap) was so horrible. They were a breath of fresh air, and the first to offer cable modems.
I hope nothing changes.... | |
| | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: Chicago I find it ironic, too.. becuase now your phone choice is... at&t... | |
| | | | | Re: Chicago unless he signs up with "ComCrap". | |
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Reviews:
·Time Warner Cable
| Glad I got rid of RCN Glad I ditched RCN awhile back. LBOs are interested in money and are never engineering driven or quality driven firms.
Its akin to Carlyle Group buying networks up. RCN shareholders and the LBO make money here. Customers won't get any benefits to them.
My building management wanted me to get a box for service, the people who got the box wound up getting overbilled. Not me, I wound up ditching RCN and was much happier.
With the LBO, the tactics for profit will be more abusive and trickier since LBO's are concerned about profit, not about customer service or quality. They aren't engineering driven based.
Time Warner has a top flight backbone with LEvel 3 and its own time warner linkages. Verizon has the MCI BACKBONE.
RCN owns some small local NORTHEASTERN BASED LINKAGES and doesn't have any quality peering with top TIER 1 networks. Everyone I know who is in 111 8th avenue and other datacenters knows that RCN is Real Crappy Network.
This new LBO just turns RCN into an Atlantic BB grade provider, and it is a downturn, not an upturn for the company.
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| Reviews:
 ·Verizon FiOS
| Who's the dinosaur now? "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".
In most cases a deployed network, be it copper rust cables or coax strands across the sludge that is our national telecommunicaitons footprint never dies truly.. it's bought out by another company for pennies on the dollar. RCN was talking crap about the then Bell Atlantic and later Verizon being dinosaurs and on their way out because broadband was going to lead the way with micro niche markets mushrooming into huge 3rd wire footprints that would kill off well established cable and telco companies... think again.. the big got bigger and RCN got a dagger in their backs and relegated to a few cherry picked locations that were still being toyed with by the big telecoms and cablecos about franchise fees. Broadband is a big player and driver of demand for service.. that was proven true, however RCN will never be a big player in the marketplace because too much money is at stake with incumbent carriers. Hundreds of millions of subscriptions which on average cost north for $50 each service shows you that the revenue at risk is into the billions of dollars country-wide.
What are we left with?
Here they are in no order of importance:
AT&T
Verizon
Comcast
Cablevision
Cox
Time Warner
Qwest
The biggest overlaps are AT&T-Comcast / Verizon and Cablevision.
What of those black holes left behind? Nothing, your basically S C R E W E D. Even local municipalities are seeing how much money it would take to build out a fiber or coax network and shudder to think what could happen to their local politics if some politicos were to push through something and lose a ton of money on it... and the more the big incumbents can make it look like a huge risk so they won't try it the safer they feel in their lobbying efforts to spend millions to prevent others from entering the market to take away some of the billions in revenue each year just for telecom services. That's right the telecoms and cable companies spend MILLIONS lobbying congress, local state & county politicians to pass laws and obstacles of all kinds to protect BILLIONS in revenue. | |
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