WideOpenWest, Inc. provides one of the nation’s leading broadbands offering an expansive portfolio of advanced services, including high-speed data (‘HSD’), cable television (‘Video’), and digital telephony (‘Telephony’) services to residential customers and offer a full range of products and services to business customers.
The company’s services are delivered across 18 markets via its efficient, advanced hybrid fiber-coax network (‘HFC’) and fiber to the home network (‘FTTH’). The company’s foo...
WideOpenWest, Inc. provides one of the nation’s leading broadbands offering an expansive portfolio of advanced services, including high-speed data (‘HSD’), cable television (‘Video’), and digital telephony (‘Telephony’) services to residential customers and offer a full range of products and services to business customers.
The company’s services are delivered across 18 markets via its efficient, advanced hybrid fiber-coax network (‘HFC’) and fiber to the home network (‘FTTH’). The company’s footprint covers certain suburban areas within the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, and Tennessee. As of December 31, 2024, the company’s broadband networks passed nearly 2.0 million homes and businesses and served 478,700 customers, reflecting a total customer penetration rate of approximately 24%.
The company’s advanced network offers HSD speeds up to 1.2 GIG (1200 Mbps) in approximately 99% of its footprint and HSD speeds up to 5 GIG (5000 Mbps) in its greenfield expansion markets. Led by the company’s robust HSD offering, its products are available either as an individual service or a bundle to residential and business service customers. The company manages its network bandwidth to meet the needs of its customers and continues to meet capacity demands as network traffic increases.
Service Offerings
The company offers subscription-based HSD, Video, and Telephony services in all of its markets. The company’s service offerings are designed to address the varying needs of customers. The subscription fee is based on the type of services selected and offered to customers either as an individual service or a bundle of services.
Residential Services
High-Speed Data Services
The company offers tiered HSD services to residential customers that include high-speed connections to the Internet over both an HFC network and Fiber to the Home network. The company offers a connection up to 1.2 GIG (1200 Mbps) in approximately 99% of its footprint. The company offers HSD speeds up to 5 GIG (5000 Mbps) in the company’s greenfield expansion markets. The company continues to develop features and products that allow its customers to take advantage of its high-speed data offering. The company’s data packages generally include the following: specialized technical support 24 hours a day, seven days a week; access to an account management portal; advanced wireless home networking; and a DOCSIS compliant modem or Optical Network Terminal.
As of December 31, 2024, approximately 81% of the company’s customer base subscribed only to its HSD service. The company expects the portion of its customer base that subscribes only to its HSD service to continue to rise as broadband utilization increases across every facet of its customers’ lives. In addition, the company fully anticipates new and existing customers to continue to purchase higher-speed tiers to support the evolution of how customers consume entertainment content, and the changing environment of where and how customers work and learn.
Video Services
The company offers its customers an array of video services and programming choices. Customers generally pay initial connection charges and fixed monthly fees for video service. In addition to the aforementioned video services, the company offers the convenience of subscribing and paying for certain streaming services (e.g., YouTube TV).
The company’s video service offering consists of the following:
Basic Cable Service: All of the company’s video customers receive a package of limited basic programming, which generally consists of local broadcast television and local community programming, including public, educational, and government access channels, and various home shopping networks. The expanded basic level of programming includes approximately 75 channels of satellite-delivered or non-broadcast channels, such as ESPN, MTV, USA, CNN, The Discovery Channel, and Nickelodeon.
Digital Cable Service, HD channels, and Premiums: This digital level of service includes more than 275 channels of digital programming, including the company’s expanded basic cable service, and more than 40 music channels. The company enables value-added features to strengthen its competitive position and generate additional revenues, including HD TV, digital video recording (‘DVR’), video on demand (‘VOD’), and subscription VOD. VOD permits customers to order movies and other programming on demand with DVD-like functions, with thousands of hours of content available for free and on a pay-per-view basis. Subscription VOD is a similar service that has specific content available to customers who subscribe to the underlying associated channel.
WOW tv+: WOW tv+ offers a traditional cable video experience plus cloud DVR functionality, voice remote with Google Assistant, and an advanced viewing experience with curated content. WOW tv+ provides Netflix integration along with quick access to dozens of streaming services and apps through the Google Play Store, with no change of input required. WOW tv+ is available via rental of a set-top box and may also be accessed through Amazon’s Fire TV stick and iOS and Android mobile and tablet devices.
Premium Channels: These channels, such as HBO, Showtime, STARZ, STARZ ENCORE, and Cinemax, provide commercial-free movies, TV shows, sports, and other special event programming and are available as part of a bundle or at an additional charge above the company’s expanded basic and digital tiers of service.
Streaming Partners: WOW HSD customers may elect to subscribe to certain streaming services (e.g., YouTube TV), allowing the convenience of paying for services on one bill.
The company’s platform enables it to provide an attractive service offering of extensive programming, as well as interactive services.
Telephony Services
The company provides residential voice services using Voice over Internet Protocol (‘VoIP’). The company’s telephony services include local and long-distance telephone services. The company offers telephone packages that include different combinations of the following core services: local area calling plans; flat-rate local and long-distance plans; unlimited local and long-distance plans; popular calling features, such as caller ID, call waiting, voicemail, call-blocking; and measured and fixed-rate toll packages based on usage.
Business Services
The company’s broadband network also supports services to business customers, and the company has developed a full suite of products for small, medium, and large local enterprises. The company offers the traditional bundled product offering and products to meet the more complex high-speed data and telephony needs of medium and large local enterprises. The company offers fiber-based services, which enable its customers to have enhanced telephony services, data speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second on its fiber network, and office-to-office metro Ethernet services that provide a secure and managed connection between customer locations. The company’s Hosted Voice product offering can replace customers’ aging private branch exchange (‘PBX’) products with telephony and data service that offers more flexible features at a lower cost. In addition, the company has a Session Initiated Protocol (‘SIP’) trunking service. This service is a direct replacement for the traditional telephone service used by large PBX customers and is delivered over its fiber network and terminated via an Ethernet connection at the customer’s premise. The company has a complete line of colocation infrastructure services, cloud computing, managed backup, and recovery services. The company serves its business customers by providing customer service and network support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Products and Services
The company employs value-based pricing strategies for its subscription HSD, Video, and Telephony services. The company focuses its pricing strategy around its HSD offering and provides the option for HSD customers to purchase Video and Telephony services with tiered features and pricing.
The company typically charges a one-time installation fee, which is sometimes waived or discounted during certain sales or promotional periods. Additionally, the company charges monthly fees for customer premise equipment utilized in providing the selected service.
Interactive Broadband Network
The company’s broadband network is critical to the implementation of its operating strategy, allowing it to offer HSD, Video, Telephony, metro Ethernet, and other enterprise-class services to its customers in an efficient manner and with a high level of quality. In addition to providing high capacity and scalability, the company’s network has been specifically engineered to have increased reliability, including features, where available, such as redundant fiber and network routing and transport hardware, which enables the rapid, automatic redirection of network traffic in the event of a fiber cut; backup power supplies in the company’s network, which ensure continuity of its service in the event of a power outage; and network monitoring to the customer premise, ensuring the integrity of its HSD, Video, and Telephony services.
Technical Overview
The company’s interactive broadband network consists primarily of an advanced HFC cable network. Fiber optic cable is a communications medium that uses glass fibers to carry signals over long distances with minimum signal loss or distortion. In most of the company’s network, its system’s owned high-capacity fiber optic cables connect to its technical facilities and multiple nodes throughout its network. These nodes are connected to individual homes and buildings by fiber and coaxial cable, which are shared by a number of customers. The company has sufficient fiber and cable capacity to subdivide its nodes if growth so dictates. The company’s HFC network has excellent broadband frequency characteristics and physical durability, which is conducive to providing HSD, Video, and Telephony transmission.
The company’s interactive broadband network for its expansion area consists of its innovative fiber to the home technology, which can support up to 5 GIG symmetrical services with the capability to provide higher speeds in the future. The highly scalable technology allows the company to deploy capacity as needed for customer growth. This network is 100% fiber delivered to the customer’s home.
The company’s interactive broadband network is designed using redundant fiber optic cables. The company’s fiber rings are ‘self-healing,’ which means they provide for very rapid, automatic redirection of network traffic, so its service will continue even if there is a single point of failure on a fiber ring.
The company distributes its services from its technical facilities called head-ends, hub sites, and data centers, most of which are equipped with a generator and/or battery backup power source to allow service to continue during a power outage. Additionally, most individual nodes served by the facilities are equipped with backup batteries. The company’s redundant fiber optic network, network services, telephony systems, and network powering systems allow it to provide telephony services consistent with industry reliability standards for traditional telephone systems.
The company monitors its network 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through the company’s virtual network operations center. Technicians in each of the company’s service areas schedule and perform installations and repairs and monitor the performance of its interactive broadband network. The company actively maintains the quality of its network to minimize service interruptions and extend the network’s operational life.
High-Speed Data Services
The company provides Internet access using high-speed cable modems or Optical Network Terminals that facilitate the connection to the customer’s home. The company provides its customers with a high level of low latency data and multiple peering arrangements with tier one Internet facility providers.
Video Services
The company’s network is designed for digital two-way interactive transmission using Internet Protocol and/or digital modulation methods for video transport from the head-end or centralized video distribution site to hubs and to distribution points (nodes) within its customers’ neighborhoods, where the signals are transferred to the company’s coaxial cable or fiber to the premise network for delivery to its customers.
Telephony Services
The company offers telephony service over its broadband network. The company installs a network interface box outside a customer’s home or an Embedded Multimedia Terminal Adapter in the home to provide IP voice services dial tone service. The company’s network interconnects with those of other local phone companies. In addition, the company serves its telephony customers using VoIP switching technology. This architecture allows for the same enhanced custom calling services as traditional time division multiplexing switching systems, as well as additional advanced business services, such as SIP, hosted PBX services, and other services.
Business Services
In addition to the HSD, Video, and Telephony services outlined above, the company also utilizes its network to provide other business services, including SIP, web hosting, metro Ethernet, and wireless backhaul services. The company also provides advanced colocation and cloud infrastructure services, including private cage or cabinet with high availability power, virtual and physical computing, high-performance storage, dedicated firewall/load balancers, private virtual local area network segmentation, disaster recovery to the cloud, and backup and archive as a service.
Programming
The company purchases some of its programming directly from the program networks by entering into affiliation agreements with the programming suppliers. The company also benefits from its membership with the National Cable Television Cooperative (‘NCTC’), which enables it to take advantage of volume discounts. As of December 31, 2024, approximately 66% of the company’s programming was sourced from the NCTC, which also handles its contracting and billing arrangements for this programming.
Competition
The company has at least one major cable competitor (typically Comcast Corporation (‘Comcast’) or Charter Communications Inc. (‘Charter’) in most of the company’s markets, and its largest telecommunications fiber competitor is AT&T, Inc. (‘AT&T’).
High-Speed Data Services
The company offers HSD speeds up to 1.2 GIG (1200 Mbps) in approximately 99% of the company’s footprint and HSD speeds up to 5 GIG (5000 Mbps) in its greenfield expansion markets. Several of its competitors, including AT&T and Google, have announced similar offerings in their service areas which overlap with a portion of its footprint. The company faces increasing competition from mobile phone companies, such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Communications, Inc. (‘Verizon’), which offer fixed or unlimited access to the Internet as a part of mobile service packages.
Video Services
The company’s primary competitors are other fiber and HFC providers, including Charter, Comcast, and AT&T U-verse, and direct broadcast satellite systems, including DirecTV and Dish Network.
Telephony Services
The company’s primary wireless and VoIP competitors include AT&T, Verizon, Charter, Comcast, and Frontier.
Legislation and Regulation
The company’s Internet services have historically been subject to more limited regulation by the Federal Communications Commission (‘FCC’). The FCC has modified many regulations applicable to the company’s business and is considering further changes, but the full impact of these changes on the company’s business is not yet known.
The company’s interstate products and services, and the regulated telecommunications earnings of all of its subsidiaries, are subject to federal regulation by the FCC, and its local and intrastate products and services, and the derived regulated earnings, are subject to regulation by state public service commissions (‘PSCs’).
Several of the company’s subsidiaries are classified by the FCC as non-dominant carriers with respect to both interstate and international long-distance services and competitive local exchange services. The company’s interstate access services are tariffed and fall within FCC established benchmarks for such services. Certain of the company’s subsidiaries are regulated by the FCC as dominant carriers in the provision of interstate switched access services. Within the company’s VoIP line of business, the company currently complies with all applicable regulations that have been issued by the FCC or state regulatory agencies.
FCC rules protect the privacy of certain information about customers that telecommunications providers, including the company, acquire in the course of providing telecommunications and interconnected VoIP services. In addition, statutory protections in Section 222 of the Communications Act apply to the company’s telecommunications services. FCC regulations also apply to the company’s use, disclosure, and protection of CPNI associated with its telecommunications and VoIP telephone service.
The company is subject to numerous local, state, and federal taxes and regulatory fees, including, but not limited to, local sales taxes, franchise fees, and PEG fees, FCC regulatory fees, and PSC regulatory fees.
History
The company was founded in 2001. The company was incorporated in 2012. It was formerly known as WideOpenWest Kite, Inc. and changed its name to WideOpenWest, Inc. in 2017.
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