Persona Communications
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Persona Communications, formerly Regional Cablesystems, is a cable television, Internet and telecommunications provider in Canada. The company predominantly serves rural towns, although it also serves a few larger cities such as Timmins, Sudbury, and Grande Prairie. The company is the fifth largest cable television provider in Canada, following Rogers, Shaw, Vidéotron and Cogeco.
Persona is owned by Bragg Communications, owners of EastLink and Amtelecom. Persona's head office is located in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. The company also has divisional offices in Greater Sudbury (for Ontario and Quebec) and Edmonton (for Western Canada).
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[edit] History
As Regional Cablesystems, the company began operations in 1986 in Newfoundland. It expanded through the acquisition of non-metropolitan cable systems in Canada through the 1990s (notably Northern Cable in 1997), and changed its corporate name to Persona in 2001.
Formerly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the publicly listed company went private in 2004 when it was bought by Dallas-based Hicks Muse Tate & Furst Inc. (now HM Capital), TD Capital Canadian Private Equity Partners (now Birch Hill Equity Partners) and CIBC World Markets Inc.
On May 4, 2007, Bragg Communications announced a purchase offer for Persona, for an undisclosed price. The deal was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) later that year. Persona's cable services in Newfoundland and Labrador are currently being rebranded as EastLink, the brand used by Bragg's other cable systems in the Maritime provinces[1], although systems elsewhere in Canada are still branded as Persona.
[edit] Other operations
In recent months, several long time executives of Persona Cable have moved on to construct and develop a Caribbean-based cable provider named Columbus Communications, which currently operates in The Bahamas, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. [2] Persona also formerly owned Cable Bahamas, a cable operator in the Bahamas which is now part of Columbus.
The company's PersonaTV division operates local cable community channels in the markets Persona serves, although the channels' branding may vary depending on the market. Persona also holds a 1.62 per cent share in CPAC.
The company launched cable Internet services in 2001 through a partnership with Sudbury-based ISP Cyberbeach. The following year, Persona directly acquired Cyberbeach. Persona also offers dial-up Internet service in some markets, including both North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, which are not served by Persona's cable division. As of 2007, Persona currently uses 'Cablerocket' as the name for their high-speed cable internet service in the Okanagan region of British Columbia (where their other plans are not available). Persona also owns two recently-acquired[3] subsidiaries in Southern British Columbia, Coast Cable along the Sunshine Coast, and Delta Cable (also known as Delta Cable Communications Ltd) near the Fraser River Delta.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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