Digital (Finally) Catches On in NYC
By STEVE DONOHUE -- Multichannel News, 4/23/2001
Although Time Warner Cable's New York City system is several months behind in its digital upgrade schedule, the MSO's flagship has exceeded the number of digital-cable subscribers it expected to sign up this year.
When the Gotham system introduced digital cable in February 2000, president Barry Rosenblum predicted 100,000 subscribers would take the digital package by the end of 2001. Last week, Rosenblum said the company has signed up 130,000 digital subscribers and 80,000 Road Runner cable-modem customers.
The system, the largest in the nation, counts 1.2 million subscribers in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Its digital-subscriber count makes for a penetration rate of about 11 percent in the 14 months since launch.
"We can barely keep up with demand," said Rosenblum. The system is adding 15,000 to 20,000 digital subscribers per month, he said.
Initially, Time Warner said it would complete the digital upgrade in all of Manhattan and Queens by last fall, and that parts of Brooklyn would be the last areas to get digital this spring.
But much of Manhattan's Upper East Side and Harlem still aren't digital-ready, along with parts of the Upper West Side and lower Manhattan and about half of Brooklyn, according to a map on the company's Web site.
Rosenblum said that in Manhattan, it was hard to obtain permits to build the large hubs the digital product requires. He expects to complete the upgrade this summer, except for some buildings that "for one reason or another we aren't allowed to upgrade."
Subscribers pay $9.95 per month for dozens of digital- basic channels. At a minimum, that would generate an additional $1.3 million in monthly revenue.
Next year, the system expects to launch a video-on-demand service, Rosenblum said.
Time Warner competes head-to-head in parts of Manhattan and Queens with RCN Corp., which has wired 800 buildings in Manhattan. Only 30 percent of those buildings get the digital ResiLink package, with 200 channels of digital cable, local telephony and a cable modem, spokeswoman Nancy Bavec said. RCN wouldn't disclose its subscriber count in New York.
By year's end, RCN expects to offer ResliLink to 85 percent of its wired buildings in Manhattan, she added.
