Charter Accelerating New Product Rollouts This Year

February 5, 2018 by Matt Daneman|Industry Notes

Some Charter Communications new product rollouts backburnered in 2016 and 2017 by the Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks integration will happen this year, CEO Tom Rutledge said during a Q4 earnings call Friday. They include broader distribution of its WorldBox set-top, of which 2 million have been deployed, and adding volumes of HD titles to its VOD service, he said. By year's end, its cloud-based Spectrum Guide will be available to almost all new customers, and 1 GB speeds using DOCSIS 3.1 will be available to almost the entire Charter footprint, he said. Rutledge said 30 percent of the legacy TWC and 60 percent of the legacy BHN footprints remain analog but will be digital by year's end. Rutledge said most of the integration is complete. Regarding the mobile service the cable provider plans to launch mid year using the Verizon mobile virtual network operator platform, Rutledge said there's no decision on pricing. He said Charter has been experimenting with licensed and unlicensed spectrum that potentially could become "licensable" alongside Wi-Fi. He said the company may want to bundle licensed spectrum with Wi-Fi spectrum for a broad mobile and in-home platform, though that's not a goal for this year. The ISP said 2017 revenue was $41.6 billion, up 3.9 percent pro forma. It ended 2017 with 16.5 million residential video customers, down 292,000 from a year earlier; 22.5 million residential Internet customers, up nearly 1.2 million; and 10.4 million residential voice customers, up 100,000. Charter stock closed up 4.4 percent Friday at $387.50. Citing federal tax changes and the FCC Communications Act Title II net neutrality rule rollback, Charter blogged it's setting its minimum wage at $15 an hour over the next year. It said most Charter workers are call center representatives, field technicians and Spectrum store workers. The company didn't say how many workers currently make less than $15 an hour. It said the tax changes and rollback also reinforce its plans for a $25 billion broadband network buildout by 2020.