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Toronto Hydro Bailing Out of Telecom Biz

January 23, 2008 BY Mark Evans

For all the upbeat talk from Toronto Hydro about its telecom services – wholesale access to corporate customers and a struggling municipal Wi-Fi service – the utility is looking to bail out of the business.

In a press release, Toronto Hydro said “it intends to solicit expressions of interest from third parties with respect to a possible sale by Toronto Hydro Corporation of its wholly-owned subsidiary Toronto Hydro Telecom Inc. which provides fibre optic cable capacity and data communications services to telecommunications carriers, business customers and large institutions in the City of Toronto.”

Translation: Toronto Hydro wants to focus on its core business and/or the business isn’t doing well given the fierce competition from Rogers, Allstream, Telus and Bell.

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  • Brian

    Mark,

    You may just be trying to be provocative in your translation of this, but I would likely interpret this as Toronto Hydro getting out of a business that’s not core, not that it’s not doing well. They are likely selling for exactly the opposite reason – that it is doing well and the new management has proved to be a success.

    I suspect pressure from the political side (from guys that have some time to have lots of lunches with local pols) may have provoked the sale.

    Intersting development.

  • http://www.markevanstech.com Mark Evans

    Me being provocative?! Maybe your right or, perhaps, I’m right. We can only tell by seeing the books. In any event, the move into Wi-Fi has not been successful.

  • Justin

    Heard the company had bled most of their senior team some time ago. Classic case of taking your eye off your core competency, I guess management enjoyed being in the media more than they enjoyed running the company.

    provocative statement… success may have been…despite current management rather than due. TH should have swapped out the corner office some time ago. Will be old news soon, should be a feeding frenzy on the current customer base.

  • http://www.amid.com/werd Rudy

    In other news: my Nortel stock is still worthless.

  • greg talonis

    Just heard that Blink communications just launched wavelength service. Anyone have any info on this company? apparently they are one of the last standing Utelo’s, also heard that they are bitter rivals to the Toronto hydro folks.

    Greg