Service To Be Available Early Next Year
posted August 15, 2008
The EPB board on Friday morning approved the purchase of $69.9 million in equipment for a new cable TV venture set to be rolled out early next year.
Katie Espeseth, who is heading up the venture, said the equipment should begin arriving in October from Alcatel-Lucent.
She said the purchase includes the complete system - from heavy electronic equipment that will be stored in a bunker at the EPB maintenance yards at Oak and Greenwood to converter boxes that customers will receive.
Alcatel-Lucent's bid was actually $200,100 higher than Motorola, but there was an issue with the low bidder on how EPB could adapt the equipment in the future.
A third bidder was Wave 5/Cisco.
Harold DePriest, EPB president said the bids were below the amount budgeted for equipment.
Ms. Espeseth said EPB is continuing to line up cable channels for the new venture.
She said the service will be initially offered in the most populated areas and be available to all 167,000 EPB customers within five years.
She said costs to customers are expected to be 5-10 percent below the current provider (Comcast).
Comcast has continued to fight the venture, and recently filed an appeal to an adverse decision by Chancellor Frank Brown.
Ms. Espeseth said EPB needs to sign up at least 35,000 customers to break even and expects to surpass that number and reach as high as 50 percent penetration.
She said testing of the new system will start later this year and continue into the first of next year, then it will go online.
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