Oceanic Time Warner Cable has cancelled a press conference scheduled for this afternoon, the second time in less than three months it has delayed the announcement of its launch of the University of Hawaii sports channel. 

UH’s first athletic event of the fall semester, the Chevron Rainbow Wahine Volleyball Invitational, is 17 days away.

A spokeswoman said Oceanic is to debut a variety of new products and services and postponed the press conference because it was more comfortable with providing a "comprehensive overview of everything versus here are a couple now and here are a couple later."

Speculation in the local broadcast community is there might be complications arising from negotiations with rival Hawaiian Telcom. 

Oceanic, which took over the UH TV rights this summer from KFVE after 28 years, is having its exclusivity threatened by Hawaiian Telcom which was licensed in June for a 15-year cable franchise by the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

The licensing followed a U. S. District Court of Appeals in Washington D. C. decision in June allowing the Federal Communications Commission to require regional sports networks to share programming with other video programming providers.

Oceanic’s corporate headquarters has been negotiating with Hawaiian Telcom for video programming. 

Two weeks ago Oceanic announced its UH pay per view package for UH sports and today was to have laid out plans for the UH Channel.