TTI Holdings, which bought troubled PNV for $5.5 million, plans to have the company's phone, cable and Internet services back up and running by the end of the month.

James Coppinger, chairman and CEO of TTI, told Truckinginfo.com that they are currently testing the system at the 280 member truckstops.
In the future, TTI will have more technicians than PNV did to keep the system up and running. The company has retained about half of the approximately 40 field technicians who did maintenance on the system, and they will be supplemented by another 60 people who work for TTI's Debit Vending Service. In addition, a new electronic system will allow the head end of PNV to "ping" the 42,000 bollards each day, where truckers plug in for the services, to make sure they are in working order. Coppinger says about 98 percent of them are operational, thanks to a massive $2 million replacement effort.
Coppinger also said TTI plans to move forward with plans announced last year by PNV to add wireless internet access for drivers at truckstops. Part of the purchase includes 750 base stations purchased by PNV which have yet to be installed. There are also plans, Coppinger says, to upgrade the PNV kiosks inside truckstops, expand the television channel lineup and to go after trucking fleets with programs that will add more trucker-subscribers.
The latter is most important if the new service is going to make it. One of the reason's for PNV's downfall was that it was unable to increase its subscriber base, losing a subscriber for almost each new one it signed up.
Despite higher revenue and a number of deals to increase services last year, PNV was unable to stop the tide of red ink, reporting major losses and layoffs in the fall. Just before Christmas, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, saying the filing had been organized to permit normal service until a decision was reached about the sale of the company. Creditors didn't go for that, however, and the company suspended services by the end of December. In early January, it laid off most of its workforce.
TTI Holdings is a subsidiary of Transcom Technologies, as is the better known Transcommunications Inc., which provides communications products and services to the transportation industry such as Transcard, CabCard, and Transfunds.
The $5.5 million deal for PNV includes substantially all the assets of PNV, except for the company's web portal, www.pnv.com. Sources close to the deal indicate that the web site will be sold to a publisher of trucking and other trade magazines.