AT&T takes over Prime Cable systems

April 11, 2001

BY TAMMY WILLIAMSON BUSINESS REPORTER

Prime Cable customers: don't toss that piece of mail from AT&T Broadband this month. That's your new cable television bill.

It comes from a new provider, AT&T Broadband--the biggest cable provider in Chicago--which now owns the cable franchise that serves some 140,000 customers on the Northwest side. And AT&T has plans to eventually roll out other services to former Prime Cable customers like high-speed Internet service, digital cable and local telephone service, using cable lines, in the next three to four years.

Philadelphia-based Comcast bought Prime Cable last August. Earlier this year, Comcast traded some cable systems around the country, including in Chicago.

Comcast did not notify Prime Cable customers of the AT&T switch directly, though the company issued a press release in January that said it and AT&T had swapped cable systems.

AT&T already offers cable service in most of the city and suburbs, while Comcast only owned a small piece of the cable TV business in the area. Comcast didn't even change the Prime Cable name and logo on bills.

Other than the AT&T Broadband name and logo on April bills, the switch to AT&T "should be really transparent to customers," said AT&T spokesman Michael Pruyn.

AT&T, which previously didn't offer cable TV to Prime Cable customers, acquired ComCast's Chicago system "in order to expand our Chicago-area cluster," Pruyn said.

AT&T doesn't have any plans right now to raise the monthly fee for former Prime Cable customers, he said. "I am not aware of any. I certainly cannot promise there would never be." Bills would rise if programming costs increased, for instance, he said.

AT&T last raised prices in February by about 5 percent, following a 9.5 percent increase last July.