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TV <br />ce77.-2-1 <br />Community <br />Television <br />P 763.427.1411 <br />www.petv.org <br />12254 Ensign Ave. N <br />Champlin, MN 55318 <br />MEMORANDUM <br />DATE: February 23, 2015 <br />TO: City of Ramsey City Council <br />FROM: Quad Cities Cable Communications Commission ("QCCCC") <br />RE: Cable Television Franchise Transfer of Ownership <br />The current cable television franchisee, Comcast, has requested transfer of ownership to <br />GreatLand Connections, Inc. The Quad Cities Cable Communications Commission ("QCCCC") <br />has reviewed the legal, technical, and financial qualifications of GreatLand Connections, Inc. <br />and recommends approval of the transfer of ownership. The City of Ramsey is a member of <br />the QCCCC joint powers organization, and the franchise transfer to GreatLand requires the <br />approval of QCCCC's member cities. <br />Background <br />Comcast and Time Warner seek to merge. To address expected anti-trust concerns, Comcast <br />will divest systems serving approximately 4 million customers nationwide to reduce the <br />merged company's footprint to 30% or less of US video subscribers. Comcast entered an <br />agreement with Charter Communications to accomplish the divestitures. <br />Under the agreement, Comcast will sell some systems to Charter, swap systems to <br />consolidate operations in certain geographic areas, and spin-off approximately 2.5 million <br />subscribers/systems, including Comcast's systems in Minnesota serving more than 550,000 <br />customers, to a newly formed, publicly -traded company, GreatLand. Comcast will not own <br />GreatLand but its shareholders will receive 66% ownership. Charter will hold the remaining <br />33%. Charter will also directly or indirectly control appointment of 6 of 9 seats on <br />GreatLand's board and Charter's CEO, Tom Rutledge, will be the chair. <br />Charter will provide "customer -facing" services for GreatLand under the terms of a yet -to - <br />be finalized agreement. This includes customer service, billing, marketing, technician <br />deployment, and network engineering and IT services. GreatLand will deliver Charter's <br />"Spectrum" branded services and video programming packages. <br />