San Bruno City Hall
After racking up millions in debt, San Bruno is exploring the sale of its city-run cable service CityNet to telecommunications conglomerate Comcast, City Manager Alex McIntyre said.
Alex McIntyre
The city has been grappling with CityNet’s future for years as the service accrued a $21.5 million debt, which the council zeroed out by transferring money from the community benefit fund in February 2024.
Ultimately, San Bruno has been unable to keep up with infrastructure updates required to keep the cable and internet service competitive. In 2023, the City Council declined to fully update the service — which serves approximately 5,900 San Bruno households — to fiber-optic, a financial investment that could have improved high-speed internet and bandwidth capabilities.
“This has been sort of a long process. The City Council decided to make it a priority to stabilize CityNet finances … getting out of the business of old legacy cable systems, and seeing who may be interested in potential acquisition,” McIntyre said.
The city put out a request for interest of purchase for CityNet at the end of 2023, moved forward with an official request for proposals in April 2024 and received a $7 million purchase proposal from Comcast.
Now, McIntyre has been authorized to negotiate a sale agreement, to be brought back to the City Council for final approval in late October if the deal bears fruit.
“We decided to move forward with further exploration of, ‘Does this make sense?’ ‘Is this viable, are we viable to Comcast?’ ‘Is this working in our community?’” he said.
Although San Bruno tried to keep up with the financial investments required to maintain CityNet and compete against larger competitors, including offerings like internet services, the time is likely now to “explore new opportunities,” according to McIntyre.
“Those investments just became too much for the city,” he said.
Major elements of a possible sale are still up in the air, including next steps for CityNet users, who might move over to Comcast services if a deal goes through or pick another provider option.
“Making sure whatever option they choose is something that makes sense for them and they understand why that transition is occurring,” McIntyre said of city priorities for the possible sale.
Also undecided are the city’s next steps for the possible $7 million in sale revenue, which could go back into city savings but would ultimately be at the discretion of the council.
(650) 344-5200 ext. 105
(650) 344-5200 ext. 105
Daily Journal staff
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(1) comment
What and absolute failure this City is, and the people on the city Council. From my experience they don't even know what streets are there's. If they upgrade to fiber long ago they could have been competitive.
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