What’s up Dot (com)?
AP&T has just announced a public workshop scheduled for Wednesday (The City of Alameda’s Public Utilities Board will hold an information-only public workshop on next Wednesday, November 12, at 7:00 p.m., on the future of Alameda Power & Telecom’s telecommunications business line.) evening following on the heels of last Wednesday’s (11/5) marathonclosed session PUB/City Council meeting. Given the last minuteness of the workshop announcement, one has to wonder what’s up? Especially given that this week’s meeting was closed for a “CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS (54957.6)”.
Right after the November 2006 election, AP&T hired a new General Manager, Girish Balachandran, who immediately held a good number of meetings with people from the community (50 or 60 people I believe) in ordert o talk to people about the Telecom side of things, as this was right after the headlines about the $44 million in interfund transfers had been in the paper. At the meeting I attended, there were probably 5 of us, and the overwhelming feedback from the attendees was “get out, get out before it’s too late.”
In February (2/25 to be exact), the PUB heard a presentation on the choices available to AP&T and it’s telecom service. At that meeting, there were three choices laid out:
- Keep the system and refinance the 2004 notes
- Keep the system, refinance the 2004 notes and add voice
- Sell the system
Point 1 (refi) had the following requirements for happening:
- Projected net telecom revenues need to exceed projected annual debt service by a significant margin
Let’s just say that while the Telecom has been more or less fiscally neutral for the last year, I’m not sure anyone would say that it’s “exceed[ed] projected annual debt service by a significant margin.” And in the current climate, bond refinancing is only more difficult.
Around this same time, the PUB voted to NOT go into Voice service (offering telephone service via AP&T’s internet, but necessitating a big technological investment, aka gasoline-on-a-fire).
Which brings us to page 9:
- Since refinancing may not be a viable option, sale of the system must be considered
Judging by the very stressed faces of the labor negogiators (and combined with the city management attempting to “smooth” over some tension in the hallways during the break in the PUB meeting during which the Council met as the ARRA do hear from SunCal on Alameda Point before recessing the meeting with almost no comment in order to return to the PUB meeting), I wonder if there are some major tea leaves to be read here.
Hey, I’m just asking questions!
Popularity: 22% [?]
Erik
November 7th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I’m sure a sale will be good for the customers — just can’t wait to go back into the dark pit that is Comcast.
Is there an easy answer to why APT can’t make any money selling Internet access?
Someone who knows
November 7th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I understand that they received one offer for the sale of the system, from Comcast. Verified on both sides AP&T and a someone inside Comcast.
Girish Balachandran, has gotten some bad advise from inside his management group from Bob and Barry. They frankly have no one in that organization that understands the cable business since Dean Batchelor is now leaving for Palo Alto.
This project was screwed from its inception because the PUB and City Counsel continued to hire Municipal Utility geeeks, that only understand electrical distribution and do not have the ability to compete in a competitive market.
Programming and the financing are their two biggest issues, and they have addressed neither. They could make a bundle selling Internet access and being a ISP and eliminate the programming issue, but it does not address the financing.
If they stay in the business they need to absorb the financing, and that will be some long term debt. The fudge the numbers six years ago and now it is time to understand the results of that
Erik
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
So, made my first call to Comcast tonight because my “standard” performance test was showing 2Mb/s down and 64kb/s up (used to be 3.8+Mb/s up and 256kb/s down).
Comcast answered the phone and told me they couldn’t test to APT equipment. They spent 20 mins talking about converting to Comcast. I demurred, since they don’t have a residential offering with a fixed IP address, which I currently need to communicate with the office.
Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this. I’m pretty sure there will be some bumps in the transition and I’m interested in finding out what other Alamedans are seeing.
Erik
December 12th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
So last night our HD cable box started going out intermittently and then back on, approximately 1/2 hour on to 1/2 hour off.
I called the help line (510-567-9350) and was on hold from 9 PM until midnight. Got the usual “we’ll send a reset to your box” and “schedule an onsite visit”.
The technician who answered the phone was gracious enough to apologize for the long wait on hold.