“These things come together. You date and date and date and one day you decide to get married. One day you decide there’s enough chatting and you say, `Let’s get going.’ “-TCI President Leo Hindery.
Leo and I have different ideas of dating. Seems to me like AT&T Corp. was playing the field during the last year (Everyone talked about how it was making goo-goo eyes at SBC), instead of courting Tele-Communications Inc. TCI was flat-out cheating! Can you really trust the person you are planning to marry if they are already married to one of your biggest enemies, Sprint Corp., via a little venture called Sprint PCS?
Now it sounds like they only had been serious for eight days before AT&T bought the ring. And it’s a pretty big ring!
But hey, Malone and Armstrong seem happy in the photos. “We’re thrilled about this,” Malone said.
I’m holding off on buying my wedding gift, however. At least they’ll have to be engaged for awhile. TCI has yet to sign divorce papers from Sprint.
AT&T is trying to do with TCI what Bell Atlantic Corp. and Sprint could not do: Successfully marry telephony and cable operations.
Can it be done?
Depends on who you ask.
TCI believes the idea has merit. After all, this is its third engagement to a telephone company.
TCI’s proposed union with Sprint planned to use cable lines to deliver customers a variety of services, including PCS. But once the cable companies actually married, the reality didn’t match the dream. TCI’s lines were too old, there wasn’t enough money … the usual complaints. No sooner had the couple went out and bought expensive new PCS licenses than rumors surfaced TCI wanted out.
TCI’s planned nuptials with Bell Atlantic, announced in late 1993, were going to put Bell Atlantic into the cable business and TCI into the PCS business. At the time, the Bell companies were spending lots of money testing video over phone lines. Most Bell companies have since given up on that strategy. U S West even split its phone and cable operations, saying the two didn’t come together like it expected.
Maybe this time, the timing is right. It won’t be the first time the Internet has played a part in a marriage.
Can a combined telco-cable operation deliver two-way data via cable? What does this mean for AT&T’s wireless business? Will this union actually advance wireless data offerings? Will a marriage make TCI’s customer service level better or will AT&T sink to TCI’s level?
Tune in next week for another episode of “As the (Telecom) World Turns.”
