GTE Prints Its Own Address for TCI Cable in Directory

To the naysayers who question letting telephone companies into the cable television business, this has got to look suspicious:

GTE, the telecommunications giant now vying for Thousand Oaks cable viewers, just printed its new phone book with the wrong address for rival TCI Cable.

And the address listed is actually the location of the broadcasting headquarters for GTE’s Americast cable.

“Maybe this is an ‘oops’ on GTE’s part, but I’m not so sure,” said Cathy Koch, the member of the city’s Cable Issues Committee who first noticed the misprint. “It’s a little strange that of all the addresses that could have been printed by mistake it had to be theirs [GTE’s].”

TCI Cable, the county’s largest cable provider, with more than 90,000 subscribers, has wasted no time in lodging complaints with GTE and the city.

TCI is seeking legal advice on how to rectify the problem.

In a letter to the city, TCI General Manager Dan Deutsch said the company is “very disturbed to not only find the error, but to locate the office as one of GTE Americast.”

“I understand how there can be mistakes in the phone book, but this one’s highly suspicious,” Deutsch said. “It’s a bit too coincidental and it upsets me.”

GTE spokesman Michael Raydo, who was previously unaware of the snafu, said with certainty that there was no ulterior motive connected with the mistake.

“GTE would never purposely do anything like this,” Raydo said. “We’re too big and have too much at stake to try anything like that.”

After a preliminary inquiry into the mistake, Raydo said it looked as if the incorrect listing occurred after TCI changed its name after the March takeover of Ventura County Cablevision.

TCI Cable, which is actually at 2323 Teller Road, is less than a mile from GTE’s Americast facility and switching station at 670 Lawrence Drive.

Raydo said that when TCI changed its name, it contacted the nearby switching station and the address was changed.

“Somehow in the process of changing names, the address got mixed up,” Raydo said. “It looks like when they changed names, the address was switched inadvertently.”

GTE, which began delivering the new telephone directories in April, is now almost finished with the distribution.

Raydo said he wasn’t sure how the problem would be fixed, but that reprinting the 938-page directory was impossible.

“Obviously, we’re going to have to come up with something,” he said.

“And we’re going to have to work closely with TCI to find a solution to this.”