Charter Communications, in the middle of purchasing the parent company of GCI, has decided that GCI will not be part of the deal.
GCI, a homegrown Alaska company, was purchased by Liberty in 2020. But Charter wants it to be spun off as a stand-alone public company before the deal closes in 2027. Liberty Broadband will distribute the GCI business among its shareholders.
Charter didn’t want to operate in Alaska, which is not seen as a growing market, and which has other issues, such as weather and few customers.
Read more about the state of the business deal at this Charter Communications link.
GCI was Alaska’s first technology startup, beginning in 1979 out of an apartment in Anchorage by company founders Ron Duncan and Bob Walp, who launched it by rebranding phone cards and ultimately created create a long-distance phone service provider that gave Alaskans more affordable options to communicate across the country.
At that time GCI started, long-distance phone calls cost Alaskans $1 per minute. But after GCI pioneered DAMA satellite communication to deliver in-state long distance, and introduced competitive facilities-based local phone service, costs came down dramatically.
GCI employs about 2,000 Alaskans.
Starlink is killing GCI and MTA.
As it should, they’re both ripping off Alaskans because they still think they have monopolies, and haven’t yet grasped that Starlink is going to run them out of business, and that they should wise up and begin treating their customers right.
George Soros…..
And how many employees does GCI have in the Philippines? Customer service calls that end up there are routinely unsatisfactory.
GCI has zero employees in the Philippines. Their customer service is outsourced. Just like most other businesses in Alaska and the Lower 48. As someone with a close relative who works there, GCI could not hire enough call center reps, despite paying the highest wages for such work. NO ONE wanted to spend 8 hours a day being sworn at, insulted, treated like trash or worse by the customers they are trying to help. GCI was good enough when they outsourced their call center to provide other jobs within the company for the people who were displaced.
GCI = Generally Crappy Internet. Funny they went after Begich for overseas jobs and GCI completely sold out.
I have stuck with GCI over the years for nostalgic loyalty but to be honest, their present day service is sub-quality and overpriced.
And the whole unsatisfactory customer service department is comprised of employees who live and work in the Philippines.
I walked away from them when the Kung Flu hit in 2020, and they collectively wet their pants in fear, locked their doors, had an armed posted in front of it, and refused to let me inside to pay my monthly bill.
They finally and very begrudgingly, sent someone outside, all double masked, who treated me with open hostility because I wouldn’t mask up outside in the open air, and he took my payment.
I told him that when I come back in a month to pay my monthly bill again, if you were still locking me out and being so hostile, that I was taking my business elsewhere.
A month later, I was met with the same insane fear and hostility…..so I spun on my heel and left, and did as I promised, took my business somewhere else.
I will never set foot in any of their businesses again.
You pay in person? What in the world for?
GCI has been a bad company from the get go. They should have stuck with phone cards. They have virtually no overhead but feed off Alaska Communications for business and charge extremely high rates.
GCI has some of the most incompetent employees!!! I bought a new iPhone 15 Pro max and they screwed up the transfer of my data from my old iPhone to my new one. I had to go to the Apple Store in Anchorage to try and have them fix the issues created at GCI in Eagle River. Even the Apple Store was puzzled with GCI’s lame attempt to compete the transfer of data. So again, why exactly to we keep tolerating this crappy service????
That’s the problem, letting some company transfer your data. So easy to do yourself.
NO companies in AK have any significant growth potential unless resource development roars back to life. Without resource development, AK is just destined to be a government-funded frontier outpost.
We are about to get massive data centers built likely in Deadhorse. Of course that’s just a fiber connection they need for that. And lots of electricity.
With the creation DOGE and the waste of billions on Broadband including public funding floating a 45 million dollar fine for overcharging us it would be nice if you highlighted in additional detail the trail to SB40 and the theft of PFD funds among other avenues to push a plan that is a huge waste of money we do not have.
Darwinian economics: the fittest survive!
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