A few days ago I became a tad frustrated that Ive had no new real news about whats going on with the join acquisition of Adelphia (the local cable company and my broadband ISP) by Comcast and Time Warner. Part of the frustration arose from some recent DNS problems Adelphia seem to be having that are really slowing down my surfing. A friend of mine who works at a major ISP and I were speculating that the DNS problems are possibly due to DNS requests from subscribers computers infected with malware. We further speculated Adelphia might be holding off on buying new DNS servers to accommodate legitimate and illegitimate DNS requests because of the pending acquisition. So, through that long train of events and speculation I was left to wonder Whats the latest with this acquisition? Specifically I was curious as to whether or not it would be Comcast or Time Warner which would come to own the Adelphia franchise in Loudoun County, Virginia. So I did a search in Google News to see if there was anything.
I came across this piece from a website called the Loudoun Connection, a source Id never even known existed before now.
I was surprised to read the article and learn that one of the options the county government was considering was the possibility of purchasing the franchise from Adelphia. This is evidently an option that becomes an option for the government as a result of a county ordinance should the ownership of the company holding the franchise change hands.
Adelphia are claiming that the ordinance is not applicable as a result of their bankruptcy filing. This sounds like an interpretive stretch to me, and I fail to see the basis for Adelphias claim here. I know Im not a lawyer, but this smacks to me as another potential example of the abuse of bankruptcy protection as a management tool.
Even though the Adelphia claim has no merit I can see, the consideration that the county would take over ownership of the cable system as a public utility sounds like an awful option to me. Ever since moving to Loudoun Ive had the feeling that Adelphia is one step above a fly-by-night operation in terms of their infrastructure, customer service and product offerings. It took them forever to roll out broadband, their customer service (or lack thereof) makes it clear they have no real idea what theyre doing and the poor response to technical problems with broadband makes me wonder what their level of technical expertise must be. Since the news of the pending sale to Comcast and Time Warner Ive been counting the days until a company that can only improve our situation in Loudoun County takes ownership of the system.
I dont think the county government would improve the situation. Ive got a strong suspicion that the county doesnt know how to manage an Internet service, and I cant imagine the county being willing to make the investments which very clearly need to be made. The article I found goes back and forth as to whether or not the threat to buy back the system from Adelphia is a simply a tactic to raise the franchise fees or if the county is actually serious about taking over the system and turning cable television and broadband into a public utility. I sincerely hope its simply a negotiation tactic.
