OTTAWA – The CRTC has approved the transfer of Persona Communications Corp., and its subsidiary Northern Cablevision, to Bragg Communications, the parent company of EastLink, effectively doubling Bragg’s size and allowing it to extend its cable and telephony interests from the East Coast to the West.
The Commission said it did not receive any interventions against the proposed sale, and so concluded the deal “would be in the public interest”.
In its application, Persona said the sale would enable Bragg to provide broadcasting distribution services on a national basis, and thus would be able to compete effectively against larger and better-financed competitors.
Persona brings to Bragg about 260,000 basic cable subscribers in Delta, Sechelt, and Gibsons, BC. Grande Prairie, AB, Sudbury and Timmins, ON, and Marystown, NF/LB, as well as numerous other places. It has also launched telephony service in Sudbury.
Bragg, and its subsidiary EastLink, already have broad cable and telephony in Nova Scotia and PEI. In August, it announced plans to purchase RuSh Communications, which has about 10,000 cable customers in various rural communities in Nova Scotia. All told, this gives Bragg about 500,000 customers.
Neither Persona nor Bragg has revealed the sale price.
With the CRTC sealing the deal, it’s likely that Persona president and CEO Dean MacDonald will take his leave of the Canadian cable business.
“I’m out,” MacDonald told Cartt.ca in May when the two companies reached a deal. “That was the goal – come in, fix it up and sell it.”
The sale is not expected to mean any job losses. When asked in May, EastLink co-CEO Dan McKeen said “We don’t expect any of that.”
