Charter Communications
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| Charter Communications, Inc. | |
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| Type | Public NASDAQ: CHTR |
| Founded | 1993 |
| Headquarters | St. Louis, MO |
| Key people | Neil Smit, President and CEO Marwan Fawaz, EVP and CTO Michael J. Lovett, EVP and COO Robert Quigley, EVP and CMO |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Products | Cable Television, HDTV, Digital Telephone, Broadband |
| Revenue | ▲$5.254 Billion USD (2005) |
| Net income | ▼-$970. Million USD (2005) |
| Employees | 16,500 (2005) |
| Website | www.charter.com |
Charter Communications NASDAQ: CHTR is an American company providing cable television, high-speed Internet, and telephone services to more than 5.7 million customers in 29 states. It is the third-largest publicly traded cable operator in the U.S., behind Comcast and Time Warner Cable.[1]
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[edit] History
Charter Communications incorporated in Delaware in 1993. Through a series of acquisitions as well as internally financed growth, the company served one million customers in 1998, 3.9 million in 1999, and 6.8 million in 2002.
The company was involved in an accounting fraud in 2000/2001 (relating to the inflation of revenue and operating cash flow and cable subscriber numbers) for which four former executives received criminal indictments in 2005. The company had been under financial pressure following a series of acquisitions; its stock peaked at $27.75 per share in November 1999, before falling to under $1 in 2002.[2]
On March 22, 2006, Charter announced that it will sell cable systems serving approximately 43,000 customers in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah to Orange Broadband Holding Company (since renamed Baja Broadband). [3]
Charter will also sell cable systems in West Virginia and Virginia to Cebridge Connections (now known as Suddenlink Communications) and cable systems in Kentucky and Illinois to New Wave Communications.[4]
In 2006, Charter accelerated sales of cable telephone services using Broadband Telephony technology (or VoIP). Charter suggests a battery backup to reduce the risk of being without phone service in the event main power is lost. [5]
Customer service representatives are reported to recommend a traditional plain-old telephone system (POTS) access line for use with medical devices.[citation needed]
[edit] Recent Growth
During the first quarter of 2008, Charter reported 10.5% revenue growth. The company added almost 126,000 telephone customers during this quarter, pushing the total to over 1.1 million. Currently, the company provides telephone service in about 11% of the homes to which the service is available, and approximately 80% of telephone customers subscribe to the company's triple-play bundle of video, high-speed Internet, and telephone services.[6]
[edit] Awards and Recognition
In December of 2007, Charter was recognized by CableWorld Magazine as "2007 Multi-System Operator of the Year." According to the magazine, the company was selected for this award based on "rapidly expanding its telephone footprint to take advantage of the triple-play offering; developing a consistent, data-driven marketing plan; and addressing its nearest-term debt maturities."[7] During the spring of 2008, Charter was honored with third place among companies with over 2,000 employees in the annual "Best Places to Work in St. Louis" competition, sponsored by the St. Louis Business Journal., based on the response of Charter employees in the area to an online survey created and managed by the Journal.[8]
[edit] Criticism
Charter has been criticized for poor customer support and frequent billing consistency issues, causing the Better Business Bureau to post [9] a warning to consumers about the company:
The Better Business Bureau has received numerous complaints regarding this cable, digital TV, and high speed internet access provider. Complainants primarily allege that the firm had improper billing practices, referred customer bills to collection agencies in error, provided poor customer service, used misleading advertising, provided defective internet or cable performance, used improper sales tactics or misrepresented the actual costs of installation and service, failed to properly install or maintain service, damaged customers' property, and failed to honor service appointments.
PCWorld also ranked Charter's cable Internet service as worst among 14 major Internet service providers.[10] All of these criticisms have led consumers to believe that Charter Communications offers the worst combination of price for channel availability of any major cable provider in the United States. Additionally, Charter High-Speed is the second-worst-rated cable ISP on dslreports.com [11] and Consumer Reports indicated in their February 2008 issue that Charter's television/Internet/telephone bundle collectively is the worst of all major national carriers.
The cable network's inability to strike deals with major sports networks such as the Big Ten Network and the NFL Network have led customers to seek other options if they wish to watch sports programming from the majority of established channels. In Wisconsin, Charter has refused to make deals with the Big Ten Network that would allow residents to watch local sporting events.[3]
It has been reported that on Monday, January 21, 2008 during a routine sweep of inactive accounts, Charter accidentally deleted the email accounts of approximately 14,000 customers and the removed data is now irretrievable. Initial reports stated that the company would not compensate users in any way but the company has since decided to give a $50 account credit to each user affected.
In St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana as of May 4, 2008, Charter and Cox Communications have been unable to reach a deal for the carriage of Cox Sports Television, effectively shutting out a large potential fanbase for the New Orleans Hornets from watching the games on local television.
In May 2008, Charter Communications announced that it will monitor websites visited by its high-speed Internet customers via a partnership with targeted advertising firm NebuAd. [4]
[edit] Timeline
- 1993 — The company was started by three executives; Barry Babcock, Jerald Kent, and Howard Wood, former executives of Cencom Cable Television in St. Louis, MO.
- 1995 — Charter paid about $300 million for a controlling interest in Crown Media.
- 1997 — EarthLink and Charter join forces to deliver high-speed Internet access through cable modems to Charter's customers in California.
- 1998 — Paul Allen buys a controlling interest.
- 1998 — Charter paid $2.8 billion to acquire Dallas cable company Marcus Communications.
- 1999 — Company goes public, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange.
- 2000 — Charter buys select AT&T cable markets, including Reno, NV and the City of St. Louis.
- 2000/2001 — The SEC investigates recent acquisitions by the company which leads to the indictment of four former executives for improper financial reporting.
- 2001 — MSN and Charter sign an agreement to offer MSN content and services to Charter’s broadband customers.
- 2001 — Recipient of many awards including the Outstanding Corporate Growth Award from the Association for Corporate Growth, the R.E. "Ted" Turner Innovator of the Year Award from the Southern Cable Telecommunications Association, and the Fast 50 Award for Growth from the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association.
- 2004 — Charter settles a class action lawsuit concerning the questionable financial reporting.
- 2008 — Charter acquires the Cable TV franchise and service for the Cerritos and Ventura, CA area from WAVE Broadband®. Many customers will have to swap out their modem and telephone equipment for continued service.
[edit] Outsourcing
On May 2, 2006, Charter announced it will shut down seven of its call centers in the U.S.. The call centers closing are in the following locations:
- St. Louis, Missouri Video Customer Care Center (July 31, 2006) (Converted into a Charter Telephone service call center)
- Bay City, Michigan (September 2006) (Converted into a Charter Dispatch center)
- Birmingham, Alabama (December 2006) (CLOSED)
- Ft. Worth, Texas (December 1, 2006) (CLOSED)
- Irwindale, California (December 2006) (CLOSED)
- Newtown, Connecticut (March 2007) (CLOSED)
- Kingsport, Tennessee (March 2007) (CLOSED)
As centers close, an increasing number of calls are being outsourced. Current outsource centers are located in Cainta, Philippines; Panama City, Panama; Mexico City, Mexico; Laredo, Texas; Moundsville, West Virginia; London, Ontario; Trenton, Ontario; Kamloops, British Columbia; Amherst, Nova Scotia; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Brasília, Brazil. Charter recently brought TeleTech onboard to assist with customer support for its growing telephone market..
Charter-owned call centers are located in St. Louis, Missouri (telephone service support center), Greenville, South Carolina, Vancouver, Washington, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Walker, Michigan, Rochester, Minnesota, Worcester, Massachusetts and Louisville, Kentucky (the largest call center enterprise-wide) with Heathrow, Florida handling the bulk of video, high-speed data, and telephony billing and customer service contacts. Each of the remaining centers are becoming increasingly specialized for particular lines of service or customer issues. In contrast, in the fourth quarter of 2007, Louisville call-center employees, who had been handling callers with Internet issues, were told to prepare for cross-training in telephone and video support. In the first quarter of 2008, Louisville call-center employees were offered the opportunity to join into the already existent company directive for Day of Service customer contact thus adding to the already growing, Louisville Center of Excellence.
[edit] References
- ^ NCTA Top 25 MSO's
- ^ Charter Communications executives sentenced in accounting schemes - 04/23/05
- ^ Charter Communications (2006-03-22). "Charter Communications Announces Agreement to Sell Systems Serving Approximately 43,700 Customers; Subsidiaries of Orange Broadband Holding Company, LLC to Purchase Charter Assets". Press release. Retrieved on 2008-05-25.
- ^ Saint Louis - Business and Technology News
- ^ Charter Communications -Telephone Service through High Speed Internet - Digital Phone :: Charter
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2008/04/07/daily71.html
- ^ BBB
- ^ http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=133019&page=1&type=table&zoomIdx=2 The Best and Worst ISPs]
- ^ dslreports.com
[edit] External links
- - Charter Business
- Charter.com - Charter Communications
- Charter.net - For Charter High-Speed customers
- Charterphone.com - For Charter Telephone customers
- Support.Charter.com - For basic questions concerning charter services
- - Charter Bundled Services
- Associated Press, April 23, 2005, [http://www.detnews.com/2005/business/0504/23/biz-159359.htm "Charter
Communications executives sentenced in accounting schemes"]
- BusinessWeek, May 29, 2006: "Charter: Cable's Sucker Stock"
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