BUSINESS
By JAY HANCOCK | January 24, 2009
Mark Phillips of Ednor Gardens in Baltimore sees ads everywhere for Verizon's high-speed Internet and cable service. He reads about "FiOS" in the paper. He wants to be your customer, Verizon. His family keep jamming their slower DSL line with entertainment downloads. When he streams video from Hulu.com, his daughter might not be able to do schoolwork online. He doesn't really want Comcast's broadband product. FiOS lays fiber-optic cable right to your door, which he says is faster and more secure.
BUSINESS
By Jay Hancock | January 31, 2009
TIP 19 Start trimming your phone, Internet, cable costs Telecom services offer large and relatively pain-free ways to reduce household bills. Do you really need a land line telephone? Is premium cable worth the money? (Is any cable? TV stations still broadcast for free, although you'll need to buy a new TV or digital converter.) Can you really tell the difference between cable Internet and cheaper DSL? From a simple phone bill 20 years ago, household telecommunication expenses have bloomed into multiple layers that can add up to more than $300 a month.
BUSINESS
By Joe Nocera | July 14, 2007
About 47 years ago, Ralph J. Roberts founded Comcast. He was a middle-aged man who had recently abandoned the belt and suspender business, and was looking for something new. He found it in a tiny company in Tupelo, Miss., which was erecting a giant antenna to provide the local citizenry with signals from the television stations in Memphis, Tenn., 90 miles away. At that moment, Roberts became a cable pioneer. Along with Ted Turner, John C. Malone, Charles F. Dolan of Cablevision, John J. Rigas of Adelphia and a handful of others, he was one of the men who built the cable industry, pulling off one of the more unheralded achievements in modern business: getting people to pay for something they had always assumed would be free.
FEATURES
September 7, 2007
Sept. 7 1927 U.S. TV pioneer Philo T. Farnsworth, 21, transmitted a line image by electronic means with his "image dissector" device. 1979 Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) made its cable TV debut.
NEWS
BY A SUN STAFF WRITER | July 30, 1999
The Howard County Council unanimously confirmed yesterday the appointment of Kathleen C. Conway of Columbia as county cable television administrator.It was the final council meeting before the legislative body's August recess.In confirming Conway, the council brushed aside misgivings from a public advocate about hiring a longtime employee of Comcast Cablevision.Comcast services 60,000 customers in Howard and also holds the cable franchises in Baltimore and Harford counties.Bunny Riedel, executive director of the Alliance for Community Media, a Washington-based public advocacy group, appeared at the council's public hearing last week and questioned whether any longtime employee of Comcast could be a strong advocate for the public.
BUSINESS
By Mark Ribbing | February 7, 1999
AFTER American Telephone & Telegraph Co. was broken up in 1984, it struggled to redefine itself. The nation's largest long-distance company was challenged by new rivals, stymied by rapid technological change and haunted by its own poor strategic decisions.Now, under Chairman and Chief Executive Officer C. Michael Armstrong, AT&T Corp. is waging a comeback, entering new markets through partnerships with such firms as British Telecommunications PLC and through acquisitions of companies like local telephone provider Teleport Communications Group Inc. (TCG)
NEWS
By Gerard Shields | November 23, 1999
The Baltimore City Council gave preliminary approval last night to a proposal to convert a Charles Street apartment building into a senior citizens' home, displacing its 150 occupants.Under the proposal, which will be up for final approval next week, the Northway Apartments at 3700 N. Charles St. would become a home for the elderly that would offer assisted living.Tenants are protesting the change, saying it will push middle-income residents out of the city and that nursing homes in the area are not fully occupied.
BUSINESS
By Rachel Sams | June 27, 1999
Challenging the cable TV industry's hopes of dominating the market for high-speed Internet connections to the home, America Online said last week that it would invest $1.5 billion in Hughes Electronics and jointly introduce a raft of new consumer services with Hughes' DirecTV unit. These include AOL-Plus, which will provide high-speed connections over satellite, and AOL TV for using TV channels for such functions as interactive shopping, Web surfing, e-mail and electronic chat.The deal will widen the choices available in the potentially huge consumer market for high-speed Internet service and interactive television.
BUSINESS
By Mark Ribbing | June 27, 1999
Sometimes a monopoly just isn't enough.For years, Comcast Corp. has been the sole provider of cable TV service in a broad suburban swath that includes parts of Harford, Howard and Baltimore counties. It's been a nice gig -- cable has come to rank not so very far below electricity and water as a basic household service, and Comcast is where 300,000 households in the three counties go for their fix.But this is the late 1990s, the age of the ever-expanding, gotta-have-it-all communications behemoth.
FEATURES
By Knight Ridder/Tribune | April 2, 1999
Interest in the conflict in Kosovo has sent viewership of the all-news cable channels soaring, according to Nielsen statistics for the first seven days of the crisis.In prime time, CNN averaged 1,084,000 homes, a jump of 79 percent above the first three weeks of March, when it averaged 604,000 homes.MSNBC, which has been slumping in prime-time ratings since the Monica Lewinsky story subsided, averaged 348,000 homes, an increase of 107 percent from 168,000 in early March.The Fox News Channel averaged 269,000 homes, up 23 percent from the 219,000 homes it averaged in the first three weeks of the month.