Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Alameda Telecom on its way out

I hate being correct when I don't want to be.

10 years ago. Alameda Bureau of Electricity called me up doing a survey of whether I thought them going into the cable business was a good idea. I said I wasn't sure I wanted my city's very successful municipal power company getting mired in the risky cable business. This was during the dotcom boom and every thing looked rosy, but already there was this sneaky sense that this all couldn't go on forever.

But they did it anyway, and my household needed to get out of dialup hell and I wanted to support them as I was hoping that my caution was totally off base. The service has been great all this time. Unfortunately they've been losing an astounding amount of money and the electric company side of the business has had to loan them money.

According to the Chron's Chip Johnson and other sources the writing is pretty clear that the cable side of the business will have to be sold, which is fine. I didn't particularly want to choose Comcast as a cable provider when a local one was available, but if suddenly we become Comcast customers for some reason that seems ok. I just hope they don't offer me the Discovery channel as I would never leave the house then.

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