Optimum West is a division of Cablevision that operates in the Rocky Mountain area, servicing Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. It offers digital cable, high speed internet, and digital voice services to over 300,000 subscribers.
The cable systems that operate under Optimum West were formerly owned by Bresnan Communications which Cablevision acquired on June 13, 2010 for $1.37 billion.[1]
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Bresnan Communications was formed by William Bresnan in 1984, originally operating cable systems on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over the next fourteen years, its operations spread to Minnesota Wisconsin, Mississippi and Georgia. In 1994, the company added international operations in Chile and Poland, with the creation of Bresnan International Partners. The company reached 400,000 subscribers after purchasing systems from TCI. When AT&T acquired TCI, Bresnan began to consider an IPO. Before that could occur, Paul Allen's Charter Communications made an offer, and purchased Bresnan's U.S. cable systems for $3.1 billion,[2] organizing them under Charter Communications' umbrella.
Bresnan re-entered the cable business in April 2002, with the $735 million purchase of former AT&T Broadband Rocky Mountain systems from Comcast. The acquisition included some 300,000 subscribers in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado.
Bresnan Communications currently has 1300 employees across its various systems. It is headquartered in Purchase, New York with offices in the four states in which it operates.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) represented several organized Bresnan units through a collective known as Bresnan Workers United. Bresnan, in keeping with current industry culture, has opposed attempts to organize unions and the majority of its employees remain unorganized with most facilities electing to decertify. Currently no employees at the Regional Operations Center [ROC] in Billings, Montana are union represented. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) does represent several Bresnan employees in Missoula, Montana and they remain the only Bresnan employees who have elected to remain union organized.
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