Meg Ryan’s lead role for Ulster
Belfast Telegraph
4/15/04
Hollywood star Meg Ryan is to appear in a documentary
about Northern Ireland children, the Telegraph can
reveal today.
The documentary will be watched by a host of celebrities
at the United Nations headquarters in New York later
this month.
Stars expected to join the UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan, include Mia Farrow, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins,
Matrix star Laurence Fishburne and singer Harry Belafonte.
The documentary was made for the “What’s
Going ON? documentary series on the Showtime channel
in the US, a series that examines the impact of violent
conflict on children.
Meg Ryan who starred in When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless
in Seattle and You Got Mail agreed to appear in the
documentary along with Irish Tenor, Ronan Tynan.
The documentary visits children on both sides of
the divide in Northern Ireland and examines how their
lives have changed since the cease fires.
A special screening of the documentary s scheduled
for April 29 at the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld
auditorium.
Secretary General Annan agreed to appear at the function
as a way of promoting awareness of conflict resolution
in Northern Ireland and around the world.
The UN co-produced the documentary series a part
of a funding program that promotes children’
rights.
The documentary will broadcast on US television on
April 25, with two repeats on May 9 and a fourth showing
on May 20.
The documentary was co-produced by the UN and telecommunications
giant, RCN, which is headed by prominent Irish American
businessman David McCourt.
Mr. McCourt is to be honored by the American Irish
Society in November for his work on the documentary
and for work for the Irish community in the US.
Previous recipients of the society’s Gold Medal
include U2 lead singer Bono, former US president Ronald
Reagan and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
C-Tec Aims to Copy MFS Success Story
Omaha World Herald
11/3/1996
A sequel to the Cinderella story of MFS Communications
Inc. of Omaha is being written on the East Coast.
Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc. is nurturing another
telecommunications venture that it expects, in the
style of MFS, will grow from a scrappy underdog into
a leading contender in telephone, television and Internet
communications.
The name of the venture is C-Tec Corp. of Princeton,
N.J. The company’s main business unit, RCN Inc,
is introducing consumers to “bundling”
– a new method of buying telecommunications
services. It’s a method that competitors will
imitate.
RCN is a cable television operator. It provides local
telephone service. It also is a long-distance telephone
supplier. And it hooks consumers up to the Internet.
In other words, it the first company in the country
with the equipment to meet all the telecommunications
needs of an average consumer. That makes it the first
company in the United States to sell the services
as a package.
An apartment dweller in Boston, for example, can
walk into the RCN “store” on Boylston
Street, browse through the high-tech services and
buy the whole bundle for a savings of about $200 a
year, the company said.
RCN’s services are only available in parts
of New York City and Boston, but the company expects
to spread soon into Washington, D.C, and other sections
of the congested Northeast.
“It’s all about choice, all about flexibility,”
said David C. McCourt, C-Tec chairman and chief executive.
Like MFS, RCN sees its mission as becoming an alternative
service to the Baby Bells and other established telecommunications
firms in the estimated $190 billion residential market.
And, like MFS, RCN thinks that it will accomplish
that mission by building its own facilities-cables,
switching stations, etc, - and offering superior service.
“It’s a telecommunications revolution,”
C-Tec declares on the cover of its annual report illustrated
by a painting of the Boston tea party. But the boxes
the patriots are dumping over the sides of boats are
labeled Nynex, Bell Atlantic and Time Warner Cable.
The similarities between MFS and C-Tec are not a coincidence.
McCourt is on the MFS Board of Directors, and James
Q Crowe, MFS chairman and chief executive, is a member
of the C-Tec board. Walter Scott Jr., Kiewit chairman,
is on the boards of MFS and C-Tec along with a slate
of other Kiewit executives.
Will RCN become the MFS of residential telecommunications?
“That’s clearly the goal,” Crowe
said. “The potential is huge. In fact, the residential
market is larger than the business oriented communication
market that MFS focuses on.”
MFS builds fiber-optic networks in major business
districts, supplying local, long-distance, high-speed
data and Internet services to corporations. The company’s
networks are in more than 50 U.S and international
cities.
WorldCom Inc.’s planned $12 billion acquisition
of MFS will make it one of the largest corporate mergers
in U.S. history.
Crowe cautions that while RCN has the potential to
be a market leader, “potential is not the same
as realization”.
C-Tec is breaking new ground in the telecommunications
industry, Crowe said. And when you break new ground,
he said, you’re going to hit some rocks.
Those rocks can be government regulations, strategic
moves by competitors or technical complications, he
said.
“It’s not a matter of what problems they
encounter, but how they solve those problems,”
Crowe said.
“The key matter for C-Tec is to accommodate
the rocks they are going to hit,” he said. “So
far, they have been able to do that in tremendous
fashion.”
In early August, C-Tec called off a corporate restructuring
and the sale of three of its operating units in reaction
to new and proposed government regulations.
McCourt said that in the late 1995 when TV assets
were overpriced, C-Tec saw an opportunity to sell
its cable television business. But first, C-Tec needed
to restructure its company to qualify for a tax-free
stock-for-stock swap. The restructuring involved spinning
off C-Tec’s core telephone assets and selling
miscellaneous business units.
Kiewit pledged $123 million toward buying three non-core
units: Residential Communications Network Inc, a residential
telecommunications company; Commonwealth Long-Distance,
a reseller of long-distance telephone service; and
C-Tec International, which holds a 40 percent interest
in Megacable, a cable-television operator in Mexico.
Kiewit had already bought Residential Communications
and was acquiring the other two businesses when C-Tec
changed its mind.
First stock prices for cable TV assets had fallen
during 1996, McCourt said.
Second, buyers were backing away because of a Treasury
Department proposal to eliminate rules for shedding
assets on a tax-free basis, known as a Morris Trust.
And third, the Telecommunications Act was adopted
in February, eliminating government regulations and
encouraging competition in the telephone and cable
industries. New opportunities fell in C-Tec’s
lap.
C-Tec bought back Residential Communications and
arranged to pay an additional $27 million to Kiewit
for Liberty Cable, a New Your cable operator the Omaha
company bought earlier in the year.
“I would say, in a bit of a serendipitous way,
we are in a better situation…I think than we
were with the original deal,” McCourt said.
C-Tec is moving quickly, making deals with other
telecommunications providers to expand and diversify
its services.
The company will offer direct-satellite television
in New York City under an agreement made last month
with DirecTV Inc.
And C-Tec will extend its reach in Boston by using
Boston Edison Co.’s20 miles of fiber-optic communication
lines to deliver RCN’s services. In exchange,
Boston Edison will offer through RCN alarm monitoring
systems and what it calls energy management services,
which would allow consumers to turn on or off their
lights, heat and air conditioning using the telephone.
Through it all, MFS’ fiber-optic lines remain
the high-tech backbone of RCN’s operations.
C-Tec leases space on MFS cables to provide telecommunication
services.
“We are a business communications company,”
Crowe said. “We have facilities now in cities
around the country. Business demand for communications
is during the business day. That means we have extra
capacity in the evenings. That capacity we make available
to RCN. They take that capacity, and value…
and sell (their) services to residential users. It’s
a perfect fit for them and us.”
And where MFS doesn’t have cables, RCN leases
from other companies or builds their own.
McCourt said C-Tec intends to spend $100 million
next year installing cables and switches to deliver
its services in New York and Boston.
“From there, we’ll ramp up pretty quickly,”
McCourt said of increasing capital investments.
In Boston, C-Tec and Boston Edison estimate they
will spend about $300 million to build a network that
will reach the 1.6 million consumers in the Boston
area.
McCourt has said it would take two years to wire
half of the 50 cities in Boston Edison’s territory.
Although RCN is ahead of the pack, such a time lag
could be damaging.
Within two years, said Fred Voit, and analyst with
the Yankee Group in Boston, “everyone is going
to be offering some kind of bundled service.”
And Voit thinks the high-tech infrastructure will
cost more than estimated.
“I don’t know what $300 million is going
to get you,” he said
Richard R. Jaros, president of Kiewit Diversified
Group, said C-Tec has the ability to fund such an
aggressive expansion. But if necessary, Kiewit would
consider an additional investment in the company.
“We have about $350 million invested in it
today” Jaros said. “I think C-Tec has
access to the equity and capital markets and is viewed
as an attractive investment for the markets.
Jaros said Kiewit has faith in McCourt’s abilities,
describing him as “street-smart and a quick
study” with a high energy level and knowledge
about rapidly deploying technology and controlling
costs.
“That’s just the kind of guy you need
for such an ambitious undertaking,” he said.
Kiewit owns the controlling interest in C-Tec and
48.5 percent of C-Tec’s common stock. The stock,
traded on the NASDAQ exchange, closed Friday at $23.62
½ per share, down 75cents
Kiewit bought its controlling stake in October 1993
for $200 million. The assets, which included cable
television operations in Michigan and New Jersey and
a telephone company in Pennsylvania, were undervalued,
according to Kiewit.
“C-Tec had some very attractive attributes
as an investment vehicle,” Jaros said.
But the real reason for investing in C-Tec was to
introduce a new version of MFS that focused on delivering
services to the home.
“If MFS was successful in the business market,
why not leverage that expertise in the residential
market?” McCourt asked.
The road to investing in C-Tec began in the late
1980’s as MFS was expanding into major U.S.
cities. When MFS entered Boston, it merged with Corporate
Communications Network, a business-communications
venture owned by McCourt. McCourt was named to the
MFS board.
“I was a start-up, and they were moving quick,”
McCourt said. “I met Jim Crowe and hit it off
with him. I have the utmost respect for him.”
McCourt has a list of impressive credentials as well.
Before starting CCN, his company designed and built
about a dozen private telecommunications networks,
including cable TV systems in Sacramento and Palo
Alto, Cailf, and parts of New York. He also owned
a television station in Grenada.
His background qualified him to lead another Kiewit
venture, called McCourt Kiewit International, which
began in 1991 designing and building hybrid cable
and telephone networks in the newly deregulated environment
of the United Kingdom.
Wile the company’s main objective was to tap
into a lucrative residential market for telephone
and cable services, there were ulterior motives, McCourt
said.
Kiewit also wanted to learn more about the residential
market, using the U.K. business as an educational
experiment, he said.
For all their similarities, MFS appeals to a technologically
sophisticated client base with the objective of saving
money, Crowe said. C-Tec however, sells an entertainment
product that must be made appealing to everyday consumers
who don’t have a lot of discretionary income.
In the United Kingdom, Kiewit discovered that 1 percent
to 2 percent of consumers had the propensity to switch
their telephone service to an alternative carrier,
while 15 percent would switch cable TV service, McCourt
said.
In the United States, the potential for attracting
customers in even greater, he said.
According to a recent study by the Yankee Group,
21.5 percent of U.S. consumers said they would switch
their local phone service and 67.5 percent said they
would change cable companies if offered a 10 percent
to 15 percent discount.
RCN has about 40,000 customers in Boston and New
York, starting with the 30,000-subscriber Liberty
Cable firm in New York City. It is signing up customers
at a rate of 500 per week, McCourt said.
Despite their similar technologies and entwined backgrounds,
there are no plans to sell C-Tec to MFS or anyone
else.
“Our philosophy is, ‘Let’s build
good business and what will come, will come,’”
said Jaros of Kiewit. “We’re long-term
players and view C-Tec and what they are doing as
a long-term opportunity to build value.”
MFS has it hands full growing aggressively to meet
the changing technology and information needs of the
business-Communications market, Crowe said. It has
no intention of trying to be everything to everybody
by entering an even larger residential market.
But, Crowe adds, no one knows what will happen in
a few years.
“At this time, you may be asking McCourt at
C-Tec if he will be buying MFS.”
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