Persona Communications, formerly Regional Cablesystems, is a cable television, Internet and telecommunications provider in Canada.
Formerly an independent company, Persona was purchased by EastLink in 2007, and now exists not as a separate company, but only as a brand still used by some of EastLink's operations in Western Canada. Other brands used include Coast Cable along the Sunshine Coast, Delta Cable near the Fraser River Delta,[1] and Northern Cablevision in parts of rural Alberta.
All of Persona's former holdings east of the Ontario-Manitoba border are now branded as EastLink.
Until its takeover by EastLink, Persona was the fifth largest cable television provider in Canada, following Rogers, Shaw, Vidéotron and Cogeco.
History
As Regional Cablesystems, the company began operations in 1986 in Newfoundland. It expanded through the acquisition of non-metropolitan cable systems in Canada through the 1990s — notably Northern Cable in 1998, which gave the company two of the largest markets, Sudbury and Timmins, that it ever served as an independent company — and changed its corporate name to Persona in 2001.
Formerly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the publicly listed company went private in 2004 when it was bought by Dallas-based Hicks Muse Tate & Furst Inc. (now HM Capital), TD Capital Canadian Private Equity Partners (now Birch Hill Equity Partners) and CIBC World Markets Inc.
On May 4, 2007, EastLink announced a purchase offer for Persona, for an undisclosed price. The deal was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) later that year[2]. Persona's cable services in Newfoundland and Labrador were rebranded in 2008 as EastLink [3], although systems elsewhere in Canada remained branded as Persona. In May 2009, this rebranding was extended to Ontario and Quebec. The Persona name is still used in parts of Western Canada.
On July 1, 2009, Persona sold its cable operations in Saskatchewan to Access Communications.[4]
Other operations
In 2005, several longtime executives of Persona Cable, including former CEO Brendan Paddick, moved on to construct and develop a Caribbean-based cable provider named Columbus Communications, which currently operates in The Bahamas, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.[5] Persona also formerly owned Cable Bahamas, a cable operator in the Bahamas which is now part of Columbus.
The company's PersonaTV division operates local cable community channels in the markets Persona serves, although the channels' branding may vary depending on the market.
The company launched cable Internet services in 2001 through a partnership with Sudbury-based ISP Cyberbeach. The following year, Persona directly acquired Cyberbeach. Persona also offered dial-up Internet service in some markets, including both North Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, which were not served by Persona's cable division. As of 2007, Persona currently uses Cablerocket as the name for their high-speed cable internet service in the Okanagan region of British Columbia, where their other plans are not available.
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