Hobbs Details Adelphia Integration
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 9/12/2006 5:54:00 PM
Time Warner Cable chief operating officer Landel Hobbs laid out in more detail the second-largest cable operator’s plans to integrate its recently acquired Adelphia Communications systems, adding that it will cost about $650 million over the next two or three years.
At the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference Tuesday, Hobbs said Time Warner has to upgrade about 20,000 miles of Adelphia plant, the largest amount being in the Carolinas, with about 6,000 miles plant to be upgraded.
Also included in the upgrade are billing-system and provisioning-system conversions for high-speed-Internet service, which should be completed by mid-2007. Hobbs said Time Warner has to change out roughly 20 provisioning systems.
He said those upgrades are beginning already, adding that Time Warner plans to start the launch of digital-phone service in most of the new Adelphia markets by the end of this year -- the Northeast will begin the rollout in early 2007.
Hobbs said the phone rollout is critical to being able to offer the triple play. As part of the upgrade, Time Warner will also have to integrate Adelphia’s several different billing systems to its own, he added.
“If you start thinking through the items that will really impact our ability to execute on this, it’s upgrades, billing-system conversions, provisioning conversions and when are you going to get the products in the field,” Hobbs said.
Aside from the upgrade, Hobbs said the Adelphia integration has four other priorities:
• Customer care: All customer calls were rerouted to Time Warner on day one of the deal being closed.
• Programming: primarily standardizing channel lineups. With the exception of Dallas and Buffalo, N.Y. -- the two stand-alone systems Time Warner received in the Adelphia deal -- most of the other systems are “being integrated or plugged into existing Time Warner Cable markets,” Hobbs said.
• Human resources: Time Warner brought on 12,000 additional employees as a result of the merger.
• Marketing: Hobbs said Time Warner has already spent about $8 million “out of the box” on marketing, dropped 4 million mail pieces and rebranded the systems. He added that marketing initiatives are “working smoothly.”
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