Qwest scuttles plan to sell its cable service in Springs
Colorado Springs – Officials with Qwest Communications International Inc. have called off talks to bring cable service to Colorado Springs, calling the city’s demands unreasonable.
The city wants a $1.53 per-customer charge, which is higher than Comcast’s $1.20 fee, said Charles Ward, president of Qwest in Colorado. The fee would be passed along to customers, but Qwest doesn’t want to pay more than its competition, he said.
“The structure of payments the city was looking for from us was excessive,” Ward said.
Denver-based Qwest said in May it hoped to compete with Comcast Corp., the lone cable company in the area.
City Councilman Jerry Heimlicher said the city worried about Qwest’s infringing on the “level playing field” clause in Comcast’s franchise agreement. The council wanted to find a way to allow Qwest into the market without requiring the company to serve everyone – and that had to involve extra fees, he said.
DENVER
Coors tops off sale of Tennessee brewery
Coors Brewing Co. has completed the sale of its Memphis, Tenn., brewery to Chism Hardy Enterprises, an investment group headed by a former brewery-plant manager.
Coors merged with Canadian brewer Molson last year. Selling the brewery was among the objectives stated by Molson Coors Brewing Co. to deliver cost savings. The company expects the sale to result in an operating-expense reduction of about $30 million annually. The company didn’t disclose financial details.
DENVER
DIA chalks up record for July passengers
Denver International Airport said it hit another record for passenger traffic in July, when more than 4.5 million passengers used the airport.
July traffic was up 6.9 percent from a year earlier, and traffic for the year through July was up 10.4 percent compared with the same period of 2005.
Frontier Airlines said Wednesday its planes were 78.8 percent full on average in August, up from 77.5 percent a year earlier.
NEW YORK
Adelphia asks judge’s OK to pay CEO bonus
Adelphia Communications Corp. has asked a judge for permission to pay its chief executive as much as $16.6 million in bonuses to encourage him to stay until the bankrupt cable operator winds down operations.
William Schleyer deserves the reward for executing the company’s $16.7 billion sale to Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp., Adelphia said in a filing Friday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Greenwood Village-based Adelphia will give most of the proceeds from the sale to creditors owed more than $18 billion.
WASHINGTON
Colorado incomes outpace U.S. average
Personal incomes in most Colorado metro areas last year outpaced the 5 percent average gain seen in U.S. metro areas as a group, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Personal incomes rose 7.3 percent in Grand Junction, 6.2 percent in Colorado Springs, 5.6 percent in Boulder, 5.5 percent in Denver-Aurora and 5.2 percent in Fort Collins-Loveland and Greeley. Pueblo, where incomes grew 2.4 percent, was the exception.
DENVER
Delay ends probe of Coors spill, fish kill
State environmental officials have given up on determining whether a spill from Coors’ brewing operation in Golden on June 16 killed fish at a nearby golf course.
Though Coors Brewing Co. notified the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment within an hour of the spill, it was two more days before Rolling Hills Country Club told Coors that as many as 20 fish in ponds at the course had died.
The department didn’t hear that the fish had died until contacted by The Denver Post last month. The length of time between the spill and the department’s subsequent review of the incident made it impossible to determine if the wastewater, made up of waste beer and water used in packaging and rinsing grain, killed the fish, said Steve Gunderson, director of the department’s water-quality-control division.
GOLDEN
Battery maker reaps venture-capital funds
Infinite Power Solutions, a company focused on specialty lithium batteries, said Wednesday it had raised $34.7 million in venture-capital funding.
D.E. Shaw Group and Polaris Venture Partners led the investment. Other investors included Core Capital Partners and Applied Ventures LLC. IPS was founded in 2001 with the investment help of Advanced Energy Technologies and SpringWorks, which also participated in the most recent round of funding.
ST. LOUIS
Peabody Coal yield expected to be down
Peabody Energy Corp., the largest U.S. coal producer, said it expects coal output this year at the low end of its targets because of problems with mining equipment and rail transportation.
Peabody said Wednesday it forecasts annual coal production of 230 million tons, the low end of its previously targeted range of 230 million to 240 million tons, because of malfunctioning equipment at the Twentymile Mine near Steamboat Springs and receiving fewer trains in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.
DETROIT
GM supersizes its powertrain warranty
General Motors Corp. has increased the powertrain warranty on all of its 2007 passenger vehicles in an effort to help it sell more autos.
The increase to five years or 100,000 miles from the previous warranty of three years or 36,000 miles became effective Wednesday and covers 900 engine, transmission and driveline components.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.
H-P probe focusing on investigators’ IDs
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer issued subpoenas Wednesday as part of a probe of Hewlett-Packard Co.’s use of investigators who used fake identities to obtain the personal phone records of company directors.
Chairwoman Patricia Dunn hired the investigators to find out which board members leaked confidential information to the media in 2005, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard said in a regulatory filing.
DETROIT
Safety features spark Dodge pickup recall
Chrysler said Wednesday it was recalling about 145,000 2006 Dodge Ram 1500 pickups to replace the passenger air-bag pack and reprogram the air bag’s computer system.
The automaker said it would also replace the front passenger seat-belt assembly.
