Hobbs: TWC Adapts To Its Customers

By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 5/24/2010 12:01:00 AM

Time Warner Cable is responding to competitive threats from telcos and satellite providers by segmenting product offerings to meet customer needs, chief operating officer Landel Hobbs said.

At a JP Morgan- sponsored investor conference in Boston on May 19, Hobbs said TWC is offering more ethnic packages, like the El Paquetazo Hispanic package, adding more day-anddate on-demand movies (in June) and offering multiroom digital video recorders and remote programming of digital video recorders.

“A lot of the things I’m talking about, you are liable to see different product sets for different customers,” Hobbs said. “That’s coming this year as well.”

He addressed several competitive categories:
Ultra high-speed Internet: Hobbs said TWC has introduced DOCSIS 3.0 service in New York City, Dallas, Cincinnati, Buffalo and Syracuse, N.Y., and a Charlotte, N.C., launch is coming “soon.” He said TWC is rolling it out DOCSIS 3.0 in a “smart way,” not getting too far ahead of applications, and would accelerate deployment only if demand spiked.

Telephony: Growth is slowing, he said, but is showing gains in the highend customer segment.

Video: TWC is seeing DirecTV getting “slightly more aggressive” with promotions, varying programs by region and extending them beyond the typical one year to the life of the contract (up to two years), Hobbs said. Verizon’s FiOS expansion, meanwhile, is slowing, although it has begun off ering no-contract plans to some buildings in New York City. Marketing spend by FiOS TV and AT&T’s U-verse in TWC markets was flat to down in the second quarter, he said.