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SBC may sell cable assets
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July 28, 2000: 6:28 a.m. ET
Report: Verizon also looking to unload properties, shift to other services
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Two of the nation's biggest phone companies, SBC Communications Inc. and Verizon Communications, are looking to sell their cable television properties, a published report said Friday.
The Wall Street Journal said both companies inherited their cable TV holdings in mergers and have decided to focus on long-distance, Internet and high-speed data services rather than cable itself.
"They don't strategically fit with what we're doing," a spokesman for Verizon, recently formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, told the newspaper. The company acknowledged it is interested in selling GTE's collection of cable networks, the report said.
A spokesman for San Antonio-based SBC said the company is "exploring several options for the business, including the outright sale" of its Midwest cable TV properties, according to the newspaper.
It is unclear how much the companies could get for their cable networks, the report said. SBC has more than 290,000 cable subscribers while Verizon's systems in California and Florida have about 130,000 customers. With cable systems selling for about $4,000 per subscriber, the properties could command about $1.6 billion in total, the report said.
SBC (SBC: Research, Estimates) stock fell 5/16 to 42-13/16 while Verizon (VZ: Research, Estimates) ended unchanged at 47 Thursday. 
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