Mountain Cable was one of three

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

service providers for the city of

Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. Hamilton has a Canada 2016 Census, population of 569,353, and its Census Metropolitan Area, census metropolitan area, which includes Burlington, ...

and its surrounding area, specifically the Hamilton Mountain area and

Haldimand County Haldimand County is a rural city-status single-tier municipality on the Niagara Peninsula in Southern Ontario, Canada, on the north shore of Lake Erie, and on the Grand River. Despite its name, it is no longer a county by definition, as all mu ...

. Its operations were acquired by Shaw Communications in 2009, which then resold them to Rogers in 2013. The other two providers in the Hamilton area are Cogeco and

Source Cable Source Cable (formerly known as Southmount Cable Limited) is one of three main cable television service providers for the city of Hamilton, Ontario. The other two are Rogers Cable (in the former Mountain Cablevision / Shaw territory) and Cog ...

(formerly known as Southmount Cable).

History

Mountain Cable was founded in 1959 as "General Co-axial Services, Limited"; it specialized in installing Master Antenna systems on

apartment building An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ma ...

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

s, and resorts. That same year, The Ontario Housing Corporation (which designed the Buchanan Park subdivision on Hamilton Mountain) was surveying the possibility of building a whole housing project with no above-ground utilities (placing them all underground to improve safety and reliability during storms). The neighbourhood's homeowners approached the company to have General Co-axial Services install a

CATV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadc ...

system with the intention of an alternative to bulky and somewhat unsightly roof-top antennas. The homeowners also asked the company to lay the first neighbourhood-wide underground utility lines. The neighbourhood would become the first housing development in all of

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

that would have all of its utilities placed underground, with no

utility pole A utility pole is a column or post typically made out of wood used to support overhead power lines and various other public utilities, such as electrical cable, fiber optic cable, and related equipment such as transformers and street lights. I ...

s other than street lights. Within two years, over three quarters of the homes in the subdivision were linked to the CATV system. In July 2009, Shaw Communications announced that it would acquire Mountain Cablevision for $300 million. In September 2009,

Rogers Communications Rogers Communications Inc. is a Canadian communications and media company operating primarily in the fields of wireless communications, cable television, telephony and Internet, with significant additional telecommunications and mass media ass ...

sued Shaw to block the sale, arguing that it violated a non-competition agreement which specified that Rogers and Shaw would only operate cablesystems in Eastern and Western Canada respectively. The suit was thrown out, with a judge ruling that the agreement was

anti-competitive Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Antitrust laws differ among state and federal laws to ensure businesses do not engage in competitive practices that harm other, usuall ...

, and that claims of future harm based on possible Eastern acquisitions by Shaw were "speculative in the extreme". In January 2013, as part of a larger series of transactions between the two companies, it was announced that Rogers had acquired Mountain Cablevision for $400 million. In 2014, Rogers began migrating Mountain customers into Rogers service, although the transition was criticized by some users for resulting in technical issues with their services.

Services

In addition to their cable television services, Mountain Cable also offered digital phone and

high-speed internet Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...

services.

Community television

The local cable television station Cable 14 was partially owned and carried by Mountain; it continued to be partially owned and carried by Shaw, and now Rogers.

References

{{Rogers Communications Defunct cable and DBS companies of Canada Internet service providers of Canada Companies based in Hamilton, Ontario Shaw Communications