Re: Paul Allen's Cable Plant-- Cost/Subscriber
Thread,
For future reference here are some figures regarding Paul Allen's empire:
Marcus Cable $3,636/subscriber
Charter Comm $3,750
Intermedia $?
Helicon Cabl $3,216
Avalon Cable $?
Falcon Cable $3,600
Fanch Commun $3,636
Currently Paul Allen has 4,681,000 subscribers who will probably be getting broadband access soon. Now judging from the figures paid per subscriber, it appears most of the systems Paul Allen has invested in will need quite a bit of work to upgrade the plant to two-way HFC.
Recently Cox Communications did a deal to buy TCA Cable TV for $4.0 billion. TCA had 883,000 subscribers. So that works out to be $4,530/subscriber. Currently Cox has 5,000,000 customers with a market cap of $21 billion. So that would place(FWIW category) a value of $4,200/subscriber. And as I understand it, Cox is the best MSO around and has probably done a great deal of upgrades to HFC already. So all the numbers generally make sense.
Ken De Paul, it appears the number you remembered, $4,500/subscriber appears to be in the ball park for what AT&T may have paid for MediaOne. I'm guessing MediaOne has already strung a lot of fiber by the figure AT&T paid.
So Frank, by my paper napkin estimates, Paul Allen has to spend mega-bucks to bring his cable plant up to two-way HFC. Not to mention cable telephony services. I don't recall what that will cost an MSO anymore?
MikeM(From Florida) |
