Publié: février 13, 2009, 5:54am CET
Charter Communications, the nation's fourth-largest cable company and a major component of Paul Allen's Vulcan, has turnaround experts on board and is prepping a Chapter 11 filing to restructure approximately $8 billion in debt.
The purchase of the St. Louis-based company in 1988 was a big component of Allen's "wired world" vision -- "I will finally have some wires for my wired world," he said back when he was purchasing both Charter and the quickly ingested Marcus Cable -- but the provider's had a hard time in the marketplace, ranking at or near the bottom of various customer-satisfaction polls over the years and getting a rare public warning from the Better Business Bureau in 2006.
Charter's Internet division also had the signal dishonor of ranking #114 -- dead last -- on Forrester Research's 2008 Customer Experience Rankings, released in December. (The video-service division shone at #110.) The operator currently serves 27 states and 5.5 million customers.