Posted on December 22, 2017 at 11:56 AM by Cathy Porchowsky
Moment with the Mayor for December 16, 2017
The City of Wadsworth is proud to celebrate CityLink’s 20th anniversary in the telecom industry, providing high quality services at an affordable price. It all began in the mid 90’s, when the City held a town hall meeting that featured Glasgow, a small town in Kentucky that built their own municipal cable system to compete with a national provider. Glasgow was able to provide cable to all residents at a much lower cost than their competitor. It wasn’t long before the City of Wadsworth began stringing fiber optic cable around the city, knowing that communications would become vital to residents of Wadsworth in the near and distant future. The City began signing up residents for cable in the fall of 1996 for services starting in January 1997. In fact, Wadsworth was the first municipality in the state of Ohio to build and operate a cable system, followed by a couple of other cities in the years to come. At the time, Time Warner was the only choice available to residents for cable and internet service. When the City launched its service, a comparable offering was provided for $85 less per month, including the Disney Channel and FSN Ohio, at no additional cost. As the City quickly signed up subscribers, it didn’t take long for the competitor to drop their prices to match those of the City. In fact, by developing City services at a fair rate, it is estimated that residents saved over $15 million dollars in just the first three years of operating a competing cable system!
In 2000, the City began offering high-speed Internet service, again, at a much lower cost than the competition, saving residents even more. In June of 2013, the City re-launched their telecom services under the umbrella of CityLink. This branding of services was needed, as the City continued to compete with services from others who entered the market in Wadsworth. An all-digital conversion of the cable system was completed earlier this year, allowing for future growth in telecom services. With that conversion, the City kept the customers’ interest at the forefront of decision-making by providing service that did not require a cable box for every TV.
Today, your hometown telecommunications provider offers over 200 channels of cable programming, phone service, home energy savings, and newly increased internet speeds up to 150mbps, once again providing a higher quality service at a competitive price. We are appreciative of all the CityLink subscribers and hope to serve many more in the future!
WCTV
Spectrum cable subscribers may have noticed that the three WCTV community access channels have been moved to a different place in the channel line-up. Public Access is now channel 1023, Government Access is channel 1024, and the Educational channel is 1025. Please pass along this change to family and friends that may also be looking for the WCTV access channels on their Spectrum service. Remember that WCTV programming can also be viewed online at my.viebit.com. CityLink cable subscribers will still enjoy all the great local programming and high school sports on channels 15, 16 & 17. However, CityLink is the only place to receive the high school basketball games and other programming in HD on channels 327,328, 329 & 330, using a set-top or DTA. Turn to 89.1, 89.2, 89.3 & 89.4 if you are using your TV’s tuner. (users may need to re-scan their TVs) CityLink is also pleased to announce increased Internet speeds to 20, 60, 100 and a new tier at 150 mbps with no fee increase. Additionally, WCTV has its own Roku channel on all Roku streaming media devices. Go to "add channel" and search for Wadsworth Community Television, then add the channel to your favorites. Coming soon . . . .HBO in HD!
Until next week……
Mayor Robin Laubaugh