Cogeco Cable Inc. has agreed to purchase the owner of the Middletown-area cable system.
The Canadian company agreed to buy Atlantic Broadband for $1.4 billion from the private equity firms that owned the cable company. Atlantic Broadband operates cable, Internet and phone systems in Pennsylvania, Florida, Maryland, Delaware, and South Carolina. Private equity firms typically assemble assets with an eye toward a later sale.
Atlantic was formed to buy Charter Cable systems in rural and suburban areas in the Eastern U.S. Charter was facing financial pressures from a heavy debt load.
In the Middletown area, Atlantic converted an obsolete Charter System to a digital format. In portions of its territory, it faces competition from Verizon’s FiOS fiber optic cable system. Satellite cable systems also made inroads in the Middletown area, due to the past condition of the Charter system.
Find out more by clicking this link from Boston.com.
