Wireless Cable is making a return(no profit yet:-).............
azcentral.com
Firm adds option for Valley TV
People's Choice offers wireless digital service
By Max Jarman
The Arizona Republic
May 4, 1999
People's Choice TV is jumping into the Phoenix area's digital communication wars with a new Valley-wide digital TV service.
In addition to a clearer picture and crisper sound, digital television offers subscribers significantly more channels than traditional cable, enhanced program guides, more advanced recording and program customizing options.
Called DigitalChoice TV, the new service, which was launched Monday, starts at $39.90 for 113 video and 40 music channels and goes up to $66.95 for 131 video, including many premium movie locations, and 40 music channels.
There is a $399 charge to install the roof antenna and hardware. But if the customer also agrees to subscribe to its $34.95 per month SpeedChoice high speed Internet service, the installation fee drops to $199.95. Existing Internet customers pay only a $49.95 installation charge to add the digital TV service.
SpeedChoice spokesman Robert Hoskins said the company believes the Internet/digital combination will present an attractive package to consumers.
And it may not be long before People's Choice adds telephone service to the product mix.
On April 29, Sprint Corp. sweetened its bid to buy People's Choice TV to $10 per share. An earlier $8 per share offer was accepted by People's Choice, but Sprint said it wanted to assure the company the deal would close in a timely manner. There also had been some speculation MCI WorldCom might make a bid for the Shelton, Conn.-based People's Choice.
People's Choice provides wireless television and Internet services over broadband frequencies in 10 markets, including Phoenix. In the Phoenix area it has a transmitter on South Mountain and a repeater on Shaw Butte.
Sprint said it intends to use the frequencies and a recently developed two-way device to provide a variety of on-demand telecommunications services to homes and businesses without using US West's lines. Currently, it relies on competitors' cables to deliver many of its services.
The two-way modem will eliminate the wires and significantly increase the speed at which data can be uploaded, Hoskins said.
Russ Robinson, Sprint's director of corporate communications, said the company expects to use People's Choice's spectrum and technology to roll out its new Sprint ION program. The service will allow customers to simultaneously talk on the telephone, surf the Net, send and receive faxes and teleconference over a single connection.
People's Choice has been operating in the Valley for several years and has several thousand television and Internet customers. It is looking for Sprint's additional financial resources, the new digital television product and a soon-to-be announced two-way wireless modem to significantly increase its market penetration.
Digital television is available through Cox Communications, US West and direct satellite broadcast services such as DirectTV and Dish Network.
But the Cox and US West digital television products are available only in limited parts of the Valley and not on all programming. Only about 60 percent of the Cox programming is in digital format, according to company spokesman Alex Horwitz.
While all of US West's programming is digital, it is available only to several thousand households, said Ruben Valdillez, a US West spokesman in Denver.
Cox and US West are packaging their digital television service with high-speed Internet access and telephony.
Satellite services offer a complete digital format throughout the Valley, but they are prohibited from including local channels in their programming. And the signals can be affected by weather.
DigitalChoice TV is limited to areas in a line of sight of the South Mountain and Shaw Butte transmitters, but Hoskins said the service should be able to be received by about 80 percent of the households in metropolitan Phoenix.
"They will be a strong immediate competitor," Mark Goldstein, former chairman of the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council, said of the new Digital Choice TV product.
But, Goldstein noted, People's Choice's wireless system may be at a disadvantage to the fiber optic cable networks of US West and Cox Communications. He noted the cable networks offer more room for growth than the airways for which People's Choice holds limited licenses.
"They could eventually find their customers limited by the amount of spectrum for which they hold licenses," he said.
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