The cable company Breezeline is taking the next step in its expansion into New Hampshire, opening a customer care center at 41 North Main St. in Concord.
The company, formerly known as Atlantic Broadband, signed a cable franchise agreement with the city last year and has been installing fiber optic cables on utility poles throughout Concord since then, signing up customers for TV, internet and voice phone service.
Installation of fiber-to-the-home is about 20% completed in the city, said Andrew Walton, Breezeline’s head of corporate communications. “We expect the rest to be completed and activated by the middle of 2023.”
With its TV-internet-phone service, Breezeline is competing against Comcast’s Xfinity and with Fidium, the fiber-optic service from telephone company Consolidated Communications, although the firms sometimes use different technologies.
Breezeline’s TV service is cloud-based, offering cable-box-like capabilities over the internet including access to various streaming channels. Its voice service is also over the internet.
The center will be formally opened with a ceremony from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 4. The event is open to the public and includes lunch by The Works Café, ice cream by Granite State Candy Shoppe, and music provided by WLNH-FM.
Breezeline said it would open a service center in the Concord area when it got the city’s franchise for cable service, answering official concerns about handling customer issues. The company currently has franchises in 36 New Hampshire communities, including four that started this year, and is slated to operate soon in Durham.
It also has a network operations and customer service center in Rochester, which also deals with some Maine locations.
Breezeline is the U.S. arm of Canadian firm Cogego Communications. It is the country’s eighth-largest cable firm with customers in 12 states and about 1,400 U.S. employees, including more than 200 in New Hampshire and Maine, plus contractors.
Concord has had cable TV since Continental Cablevision started in 1970.