Service Electric
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| Service Electric | |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Founded | 1948 |
| Headquarters | Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Products | Cable television, Internet Service Provider, VoIP |
| Website | http://www.secable.com/ |
Service Electric Cable TV (SECTV) is a cable television company serving eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. It was founded in June 1948 by John Walson and became the world's first cable provider. At the time, the surrounding mountains of the Lehigh Valley made over the air reception of stations from Philadelphia and New York difficult. Walson solved this problem by anchoring an antenna on the top of a mountain and running a cable carrying the TV transmissions down into the valley.
The cable service is well known for its original local programming, including broadcasts of local Lehigh Valley-area sporting events including football, boys and girls basketball games and wrestling matches in the highly-respected Lehigh Valley Conference. Beginning April 2008, Service Electric also will provide television coverage of the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, the AAA-level Minor League affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies, which will begin playing their home games in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Service Electric's main competitor in the market was Adelphia Cable until Adelphia's cable assets were purchased by Comcast and Time Warner in July 2006.
In the Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania market, Service Electric features a channel that offers split-screen camera monitors from different roads in Luzerne County. On Service Electric's digital package, this is offered as a 24-hour channel, but on the more basic packages it is shown in place of KYW's non-local programming (i.e., the Philadelphia news will be shown, and then the traffic camera channel will be shown, so as not to violate agreements between local broadcasters who have the right to broadcast certain shows and production companies, but to still satisfy FCC rules requiring carriage of any station that can be received via over-the-air antenna by a local cable operator.)
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