Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire
Wednesday, June 11, 1997
The federal government says an Oceanic Cable rate increase that took effect in January was unreasonable and ordered the company to provide customer refunds amounting to pennies per month. FCC tells Oceanic
to refund customersThe Federal Communications Commission issued an order last week that said a number Oceanic used to calculate the increase for its standard 42-channel service was too high by 15 cents. The service went from $22.87 to $25.15 a month, excluding taxes, in January.
But Oceanic spokesman Kit Beuret said the company plans to meet with the FCC to explain why it believes the calculations are correct. He said the government process for calculating rates is complex and subject to differing interpretations, not unlike figuring annual income taxes.
Oceanic is Hawaii's largest cable TV company with about 245,000 subscribers, most of whom purchase the standard service.
GTE Hawaiian Tel is challenging an agreement allowing a competitor, AT&T, into the local market. HawTel challenges
competition pactHawaiian Tel filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Monday against the state Public Utilities Commission and AT&T. A June 6 agreement between the two communications companies lays out the terms by which Hawaiian Tel must make its network of existing telephone lines available to AT&T.
PUC chairman Yukio Naito said the commission decided on some of the terms in the agreement through arbitration with the two parties.
Hawaiian Tel attorney Jeffrey Maldonado said in a statement that the company wants the court to have the PUC revise the agreement to comply with the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, which set the stage for elimination of local telephone monopolies.
The company said that one of its main concerns is that the pricing structure in the agreement gives AT&T a competitive advantage.
WASHINGTON -- Lenders said the percentage of borrowers falling behind on their mortgage payments rose in the first quarter of 1997, according to a survey by a trade group. Mortgage delinquencies
climbed in first quarterThe Mortgage Bankers Association of America said the delinquency rate rose to 4.36 percent in the first quarter from a revised 4.32 percent in the fourth quarter of 1996, originally reported as 4.37 percent. The delinquency rate for last year's first quarter was 4.47 percent.
The findings mean payments on 4.36 percent of the 22 million loans in the MBA's survey were overdue by at least 30 days during the first quarter, Bloomberg News reported.
Rising consumer debt and an all-time high in personal bankruptcies contributed to the increase in mortgage delinquencies, said Ron McCord, president of the MBA. "We are projecting that we will see a rising trend in the next two or three quarters," he said. "It does raise some concern."
Today's delinquency survey, which tracks homes that have between one and four units, covers about one-third of all mortgages, the group said.