Copyright 2000 The Buffalo News
The Buffalo News
July 14, 2000, Friday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: LOCAL, Pg. 4B
LENGTH: 556 words
HEADLINE:
ADELPHIA RIVAL, INTERNET PROVIDER STATE CASES
BYLINE:
MARGARET HAMMERSLEY; News Staff Reporter
BODY:
Telecommunications companies eager to set up operations in Buffalo
are knocking at the doors of City Hall.
Two presented their cases
directly to the Common Council's Telecommunications Committee Thursday.
American Broadband, proposing to go into competition with Adelphia
Communications, asked to start negotiating. Metricom Ricochet, which wants to
sell rapid Internet links for portable computers, petitioned to place radio
units on the tops of utility poles, with five to eight units per mile.
Council President James W. Pitts said the Council will vote July 25 --
its last scheduled meeting before the August recess -- to start serious
negotiating with Broadband.
"I figure it will take about 60 days max to
go through this process," Pitts said.
Organized only 10 months ago,
Broadband now proposes a $ 64 million investment here in cable television and
high-speed access services to the Internet, with the ultimate aim of also
competing for telephone service.
"We can have a healthy business that
will pay back our investment if we achieve 25 percent penetration on the cable
side," said Donna Garofino, Broadband vice president for government and public
affairs.
Garofino said the 860-megahertz capacity visualized by
Broadband would provide three times the digital capacity of Adelphia after it
completes its projected expansion to 750 megahertz.
Broadband has made
similar overtures to the State of Rhode Island and Maryland's Baltimore County,
she said.
A particular attraction here is the opportunity to seek to
expand to Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, she said.
If a welcome sign
was out in City Hall, so were the lawyers and administrators whose jobs is to
look at money.
Thomas Tarapacki, city director of telecommunications,
and attorney John Gardner, a consultant to the city, said they will check out
Broadband's financing.
"This might be a little difficult with a new
company starting up but not impossible," said Tarapacki.
Garofino said
Broadband is backed by Great Hill Partners, a Boston, Mass.-based investment
firm, and expects to line up $ 500 million elsewhere this summer.
She
said it and other companies seeking cable franchises in the wake of the
opportunities offered under the Telecommunications Act of 1996
are in positions similar to those of today's massive cable conglomerate in the
mid-1970s: They are beginning.
"Where competition actively exists,
prices stabilize or are reduced," she said. "Customers are treated better."
Norman LeBlanc, government relations representative for Metricom, said
its future subscribers will connect to the Internet from their back yards or
while traveling and will do so without tying up phone lines or enduring long
waits.
Metricom, when its installations on existing poles and towers are
complete, expects to charge a customer about $ 60 a month, he said.
Council members made it clear that a company expecting to use utility
poles in the city should look at headquarters space there.
"I want to
know where they are going to be physically located in the City of Buffalo," said
Majority Leader Rosemarie LoTempio.
Pitts suggested that location of the
Metricom office and its expected 10 employees become part of negotiations.
"We're very excited not only about your company but Buffalo's future,"
Pitts said.
LOAD-DATE: July 17, 2000
