UTICA, Ont. – Another independent cable company, this time Compton Communications, which serves about 5,500 basic cable subscribers in and around Port Perry, Ont., has been purchased by Rogers Cable, the companies announced late Tuesday evening.
The purchase of Compton Communications augments Rogers’ cable footprint in an adjacent and growing Ontario region, says the company.
Compton has been a leader in Canadian cable, despite its size. It boasts north of 75% digital cable penetration, was a very early adopter of video on demand and was the first cable company in Canada to offer a high definition digital video recorder in 2003. It’s also had a fibre-based commercial services offering since 2008.
This is also an end of an era of sorts as this will be the first time in almost a half century that a Compton isn’t running a cable company in Canada. The late Simon Compton built the original systems sold this week in the 1960s and then was one of the founders of Island Cablevision, on PEI, in the ’70s. It was sold to Bragg Communications in 1998.
Simon’s son Ron owned and operated Compton Communications and told Cartt.ca simply that it was just time to sell and let the larger company with its vast resources face what is an uncertain cable, telecom and broadband future. “The industry has changed so dramatically in the last couple of years in terms of competition,” Compton said, citing the likes of over-the-top video challengers like Netflix as a concern, too. “But we are doing extremely well as a company and our growth has been going pretty steady in terms our subscriber count.
“And you want to sell when you’re doing well, not when you start to get inundated by your competition. My concern was that the competition is going to increase in the coming years and now is the time to go. We’re just too small,” he explained.
Compton Communications is situated in an affluent, growing residential area about an hour’s drive from Toronto and was a community business leader in its service regions Uxbridge and Port Perry. “We’ve been growing very well. I don’t know this for certain but I don’t think all small operators are enjoying the same growth,” Compton added.
“We’ve enjoyed some pretty good penetration as a result of our approach.”
“We are excited to offer more Canadians connected, seamless entertainment experiences by leveraging Compton Communications’ state of the art infrastructure and footprint,” said Wayne Cramp, vice-president of field operations, Ontario, Rogers. “We look forward to welcoming Compton’s employees to the Rogers family and look forward to providing customers with continued high quality services and augmented offerings.”
As part of the deal, Rogers agreed to keep all 18 of Compton’s employees for at least two years. “As we started with the different companies that were interested in making an offer, Rogers came through with the strongest statement as to what their intentions were for the employees,” said Compton, who added Rogers further commitment to the community is shown in the 21-year lease it signed with him as he kept ownership of the head office building.
While no purchase price for Compton was disclosed, we note that Rogers purchased a similar-sized system in the summer of last year, Kincardine Cable, for $20 million.
– Greg O’Brien
