|
Bresnan execs tour state, talk up success
Jun 25, 2009 (Independent Record - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Celebrating 25 years in business and marking seven years as the cable television provider for Montana, a pair of executives with Bresnan Communications are making the rounds of the state this week, talking up the company's success and sharing their outlook for the next several years in the ever-changing areas of TV, Internet and voice communications.
Bresnan bought the cable systems of Montana seven years ago from AT&T, and has since put more than $1 billion into upgrading its infrastructure across its territory, according to chief operating officer Steve Brookstein.
The company is headquartered outside of New York City, but Bresnan's entire business footprint is in the Rockies. The company offers cable, Internet and telephone service in Montana, Wyoming, the western alope of Colorado and a small portion of Utah. Montana accounts for some 40 percent of the company's business, the largest share of any state.
With around 305,000 television customers, 200,000 Internet users and 125,000 telephone customers (many of whom subscribe to more than one service), Bresnan is hardly in the big leagues of national cable companies. Comcast, the largest in the country, has 24 million subscribers, while Time Warner (13 million), Cox and Charter (5 million apiece) all have exponentially more than Bresnan.
Instead, Bresnan, the 13th largest cable company in the country, according to the National Cable & Telecom Association, fills a smaller niche similar to Midcontinent Communications (206,000 subscribers in the Dakotas), WideOpenWest (364,000 subscribers in a handful of Midwestern states) and Atlantic Broadband (285,000 subscribers in several Atlantic Seaboard states).
"We're not a large cable company so we're not on the bleeding edge, but we're very fast followers," Brookstein said.
While the economies of scale that come from serving millions of subscribers aren't available to Bresnan, serving lightly populated states is still good business, he said.
"These are population centers in unpopulated states," Brookstein said of Helena, Billings and the company's other Montana territories, as well as places like Casper and Cheyenne. "They're cities. They're not Chicago, but they're cities. What's relevant to us is home density. At 60 to 70 homes per square mile, that's very scaleable to build these kinds of networks and operate them."
Brookstein acknowledged competition from wireless phone companies and a growing generation of "cable cutters" who don't have hard-line telephones in their homes, but said that by offering bundled deals with other services Bresnan is still growing its voice customer base.
He said high-speed Internet service will get much faster in coming years, possibly blurring the line between how customers get their video -- from television or over the Web.
But even as the Net gets faster and offers more and higher-quality video, Brookstein believes that in the next several years anyway, customers won't be giving up their television sets.
"We think of it as 'lean forward' versus 'lean back,'" he said. "When it's time to lean back and watch a movie, watch a sporting event, we believe that experience is going to continue to be robust. There will be this convergence of platforms, but in the next five years I see no reason why TV in the home won't remain the predominant way people consume video."
Vice president of public affairs Shawn Beqaj touted the company's community involvement, including a high-profile push for Internet safety among children which has included a traveling troupe from the Missoula Children's Theater performing at schools around the state and teaching kids how to safely go online.
"If you have kids on the Net and you don't know where they're going, you inherently have a problem," he said.
Beqac also talked up the company's business incubator program, which involves partnerships with Small Business Development Centers across the state to encourage entrepreneurs, start-ups and even existing businesses to complete a formal business plan and take advantage of $10,000 in free Bresnan cable advertising.
It's a good deal for the company in the long run, particularly if those businesses thrive and go on to become regular paying advertisers. Brookstein said advertising revenue makes up about 5 percent of the business.
To see more of the Independent Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.helenair.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Independent Record, Helena, Mont.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
[ Back Small Business VoIP Global Community's Homepage ]
|
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Activate Email 
TMCnet LOGIN
