Persona Inc.

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Persona Inc., formerly Regional Cablesystems, is a cable television, Internet and telecommunications provider in Canada. The company predominantly serves rural towns, although it also serves a few larger cities such as Timmins and Greater Sudbury. The company is the fifth largest cable television provider in Canada, following Rogers, Shaw, Cogeco and Vidéotron.

Persona's head office is located in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. The company also has divisional offices in Greater Sudbury (for Ontario and Quebec) and Edmonton (for Western Canada).

[edit] History

As Regional Cablesystems, the company began operations in 1986 in Newfoundland. It expanded through the acquisition of non-metropolitan cable systems in Canada through the 1990s, and changed its corporate name to Persona in 2001.

Formerly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Persona was made private in 2004 and is now owned by an investor group assembled by Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst.

[edit] Other operations

In recent months, several long time executives of Persona Cable have moved on to construct and develop a Caribbean-based cable provider named Columbus Communications, which currently operates in The Bahamas, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. [1] Persona also formerly owned Cable Bahamas, a cable operator in the Bahamas which is now part of Columbus.

The company's Persona TV division operates local cable community channels in the markets Persona serves, although the channels' branding may vary depending on the market. Persona also holds a 1.62 per cent share in CPAC.

The company launched cable Internet services in 2001 through a partnership with Sudbury-based ISP Cyberbeach. The following year, Persona directly acquired Cyberbeach.