The West Boca Community Council hosted a forum on the future of Bulk TV and other media services on May 20.  The event was by invitation only for the Presidents and designated colleagues of homeowner and condominium associations throughout West Boca.  “Bulk” means services provided via contracts with community associations rather than contracting for them directly with residents.

Representatives from Comcast, Hotwire, and People’s Choice made presentations to a packed meeting, as did CSI Associates, a bulk services consulting company.  AT&T was also invited, but they declined to come because they are not yet set up to offer bulk services, despite the fact that they are aggressively marketing their new U-Verse program directly to homeowners throughout much of West Boca.

People’s Choice

Steve Friedman, co-owner of People’s Choice, a Boynton Beach-based company that is one of Florida’s largest distributors for Direct TV, described his company as the “best kept secret” in bulk services.  It provides satellite TV service via a central dish for multi-family buildings, the signals for which are carried to all units via wiring throughout each building.  For single-family homes, a central dish is situated on the HOA’s common area, from which signals are distributed by underground wiring to each house installed by People’s Choice.

Claiming the company’s name is its mission, People’s Choice prides itself on personal service and choice.  Associations are welcome to change channel lineups every year.  Beyond the community-wide channel selection, the company offers additional channels tailored to individual residents.  It assigns a property liaison employee to each community to teach residents how to use the People’s Choice program and stay on top of customer service issues.  The company can also provide Internet service at various speeds and prices.

How to contact People’s Choice for bulk service:
Tanya Friedman
561-735-3434
Tanya@pcctv.com

Hotwire

Tom Gregory described Hotwire’s program as the high end of bulk service options.  It installs a totally fiber optic infrastructure in every community it services, which is linked to a fiber optic pipeline that runs through South Florida for delivery of the actual programming.  Hotwire can deliver over 300 digital channels, high speed Internet (5 PBPS minimum, can provide more), email addresses, anti-spam and virus protection, and a personalized web page for the community.  Channel lineups can be tailored to each community, including programming from over 30 countries.  Its package includes digital phone service with unlimited free calling within the United States, voicemail and related services, and the ability to retain your existing phone number.  It also offers a comprehensive home security system with optional MedAlert monitoring.

Gregory spoke at some length about the transformation of home media coming down the pike and claimed that Hotwire technology was well positioned to ride the waves of the rapid changes ahead.  He predicted that the Internet will be the primary platform of the more specialized programming in the not too distant future.

How to contact Hotwire for bulk service:
Ron Leslie
954-628-7026

rleslie@hotwirecommunication.com

Comcast

Just about everyone in the room was already familiar with Comcast, since it and the company it acquired, Adelphia, have been servicing most associations in West Boca since the 1990s.  Tom Horne started off his presentation with an anecdote about addressing a similar crowd recently, half of whom booed Comcast and the other half cheered.  He said he was encouraged by the second group until he realized they were cheering on the first group!  A deft move to disarm any Comcast critics in the audience who may have been lurking in the audience.

Horne told the group that Comcast had invested over $200 million to improve the old Adelphia infrastructure in our area.  He said the company was renewing bulk contracts for about 50,000 homes a year.  Some communities are pre-renewing before contract expiration to better prepare for the ongoing migration of analog channels to digital signals.   Tom pointed out that residents in associations served by Comcast can upgrade beyond the Bulk package for both programming and equipment by opening their own retail account directly with Comcast.

How to contact Comcast for bulk service:
Shernette Howard
561-227-3458
Shernette_Howard@cable.comcast.com

Q&A

Steve and both Toms fielded a lot of good questions from the audience after their presentations.

Council President Sheri Scarborough started off the Q&A session with a hot button issue in many associations – will you turn off the service, at the association’s request, of an owner who is financially delinquent?

Steve and Tom G. said yes.  Tom H. hedged, noting that many association residents are also direct customers of Comcast for enhanced services like Internet connectivity that come through the same pipeline.  He also cautioned that there might be potential legal issues raised by turning off the service of individual units.

Sheri also asked if 10 associations could band together to contract for better bulk service rates.  All three said yes, but one was skeptical about the practicality of organizing such a venture on the association side.

To the question of how small a community each provider is willing to service:

People’s Choice said 27 units.
Hotwire answered that the minimum was 100.
Comcast noted it already provided service to very small associations.

Will you allow associations to terminate their contracts early?

No one was eager to agree to this because of the high infrastructure investment cost, but all three were amenable to renegotiating contract provisions.

How long will it take you to install from scratch?

People’s Choice – 30 to 45 days
Hotwire – can do in 60 days, prefer 90 – for big communities, need 5-6 months
Comcast didn’t address this question, since they already have an infrastructure in place in most West Boca communities.

Where do my customer service calls go?

All three companies said they had customer service centers in Palm Beach County, but some questions get rolled over to more distant locations – none of them outside the United States.

Do you provide a community channel for association messaging to residents?

Yes was unanimous.

The last word goes to Tom Horne from Comcast, who made an excellent point to the assembled association leadership.  He cautioned that most association governing documents only give Boards the right to contract for bulk Cable TV services.  To add other media such as Internet, phone and security, those documents may first need to be amended!

 

Alan Kellock