PRINCETON, N.J. - Struggling cable company RCN Corp. said it will file for bankruptcy as part of a strategy to attract new investors and stay in the business of bundling cable television, Internet and telephone service.
"We anticipate filing Chapter 11 in order to consummate a deal," Barak Bar-Cohen, an RCN spokesman, said Tuesday. He couldn't say when the company might file.
Managers of Princeton-based RCN hope to swap $1.7 billion in debt for a share in the company, Bar-Cohen said.
Bar-Cohen said service to RCN's 436,000 subscribers nationwide will not be disrupted.
He said the company is negotiating with several potential investors, although he declined to say who they were, and hopes to finalize an equity-for-debt deal before March 1.
Despite conjecture in recent published reports, Cohen said the company has no plans to sell its Lehigh Valley system, which includes 100,000 subscribers, and it one of the company's most attractive assets. Though such a sale could provide a cash infusion, it would be inconsistent with the company's longer-range plans of attracting new partners and continuing to grow in the highly competitive telecommunications market.
Sales growth has been modest at the company, which has had steep layoffs.
RCN stock, which had reached $75 a share in early 2000, was unchanged to close at 49 cents a share on the Nasdaq stock market.
One of RCN's biggest investors, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, sold 40 percent of his shares last month for a loss of about $650 million.
On Valentine's Day (news - web sites), RCN chief executive David C. McCourt issued a rosy statement on a new Web site, www.rcntomorrow, intended to provide updates on the company's survival plans.
"Some of our competitors will try to suggest that RCN doesn't have much of a future," the statement read. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...y&sid=95573501
It truly would be unfortunate if RCN died. I know of no other cable provider that offers 5mbps/800k or anything anywhere near it.
Optimum Online out of New York offers 8mbps/900k, but it's only New York they service.Originally Posted by Miniver
8mbps?!
I'm finding it very difficult to stop the flood of drool coming out of my mouth.
Yeah, I drool too.
check out
http://www.dslreports.com/archive/optonline.net
These are the speed test results for some optimum online users. Ignore the first 3 entries with insane download speed. Those results are not typical. The 9+mbit are.
Notice the awesome speeds. :gj
Whats so good about having 8megs download when the person your downloading from have barely over a meg of upload.
um ever heard of multi-source downloads, usenet, bittorrent?
fuc me _ i can do all kinds of things at once with that speed _ and multiple downloads _ hosting games _ sharing with friends - god dam i can almost cum in my pants.
comcast will try to reap the victoms of this someway or another.
i coulda swore you said sausage...http://home.comcast.net/~eddyisgreat/Sig0183.jpg
eheheheh
10Mbps up here in Canada
Drool some more :D
Yeah, brag all you want.
Just wait until the CRIA breaks your door down and hauls you away for sharing mp3s with that fat bandwidth.
Canadians are next in line for litigation!!
No, America will always be the litigation capital of the world.
:cross
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