Broadstripe

Last updated
Broadstripe
Company type Subsidiary
Industry Telecommunications
Founded1998
Headquarters Millersville, MD [1]
Products Cable television, Broadband internet, VoIP
Parent WOW!
Website http://www.broadstripe.com

Broadstripe is a telecommunications and cable company owned by WideOpenWest and Anne Arundel Broadband, with WideOpenWest holding a majority stake in the company. [2] Serving communities in Maryland, Broadstripe serves residential customers with WOW! serving business customers, with entertainment and communications products including digital cable, home phone and broadband internet services.

Contents

History

In 1998, John Brooks, co-founder of Brooks Fiber Media, along with former Charter Communications, Inc. executives Kelvin Westbrook, Jeffrey Sander and Charles Prayer, Jr. formed Millennium Digital Media (Millennium.) In September 2006, Millennium named Bill Shreffler, president and chief executive officer. [3] Millennium officially changed its name to Broadstripe in October 2007. [4] In November of that year, Broadstripe attempted to acquire James Cable LLC of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan for $125 million, the deal eventually fell through between the two companies. Since then, the cable provider has reorganized its leadership team, adding a number of telecommunications industry veterans, including its chief executive Gustavo Prilick in August 2008. [5] According to an August 2009 article in the St. Louis Business Journal , [6] Broadstripe spent nearly $20 million upgrading its network and overhauling customer care operations.

Bankruptcy

On January 2, 2009, Broadstripe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in St. Louis, MO. [7] Growing mostly via acquisition, efforts to increase margins were unsatisfactory due to increased competition from satellite providers, and two land-line based competitors in Maryland. In an effort to reduce debt, management attempted to sell parts of the company to competitors, but was unsuccessful. [8]

The company has reported a $2.63 million net loss in September, 2010 on revenue of $7.68 billion. Depreciation and amortization for the month totaled $2.2 million. Also, Broadstripe was authorized in October to adopt a bonus program for 12 executives that may cost as much as $446,000. To qualify, the cable system for which the employees work must be sold. [9]

In February 2010, the company launched a 60-day, money-back guarantee program offering both new and existing residential customers 60 days to test new services from the cable provider’s offerings. According to the company, if the customer is not satisfied or has issues, Broadstripe will pay for the subscriber to restore service with their old provider.

Sale of Systems

On August 26, 2011 Broadstripe announced the sale of its Michigan cable system to WideOpenWest (WOW!). On the same date it announced the sale of its Oregon and Washington cable systems to WaveDivision's Wave Broadband unit. Its Maryland system was sold to Anne Arundel Broadband, and will be operated under the Broadstripe name by former Broadstripe Management. These sales closed on January 13, 2012. [10] [11]

In October 2014 WideOpenWest (WOW!) acquired a majority ownership in the Maryland system owned by Anne Arundel Broadband operating as Broadstripe, making Broadstripe a subsidiary of WOW! [2]

Services

Broadstripe offers the following services:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Altice USA</span> American telecommunications and media company; spin-off of Altice Europe

Altice USA, Inc., commonly known as Altice, is an American cable television provider with headquarters in New York City, owned by the Franco-Israeli businessman Patrick Drahi. It delivers pay television, Internet access, telephone services, and original television content to approximately 4.9 million residential and business customers in 21 states.

Charter Communications, Inc., is an American telecommunications and mass media company with services branded as Spectrum. With over 32 million customers in 41 states, it is the largest cable operator in the United States by subscribers, just ahead of Comcast, and the largest pay TV operator ahead of Comcast and AT&T. Charter is the fifth-largest telephone provider based on number of residential lines.

WideOpenWest is the eighth largest cable operator in the United States with their network passing 1.9 million homes and businesses. The company offers landline telephone, cable television, and broadband Internet services. As of November 3, 2022, WOW! has about 538,100 subscribers.

Suddenlink was an American telecommunications subsidiary of Altice USA trading in cable television, broadband, IP telephony, home security, and advertising. Prior to its acquisition by Altice, the company was the seventh largest cable operator with 1.5 million residential and 90,000 business subscribers. After Altice acquired Cablevision Systems Corporation on November 30, 2016, Suddenlink was combined with Cablevision. Together with Optimum, the name used by Cablevision for its products, Altice USA became the United States' fourth largest cable operator with 4.6 million subscribers, and the sixth largest Pay TV service provider with 3.5 million subscribers. On August 1, 2022, Suddenlink rebranded into Optimum.

Channel 6 - Lawrence, KS was a 24-hour local information channel based in Lawrence, Kansas, which served Douglas County, Leavenworth County and Wyandotte County west of Interstate 435. Owned by Midco Communications, the channel was based at the company's corporate headquarters at New Hampshire and Seventh Streets in downtown Lawrence. Previously, the channel was called 6 News Lawrence. Newscasts ceased after Midco Communications bought the organization in July 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frontier Communications</span> American telecommunications company

Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. is an American telecommunications company. Known as Citizens Utilities Company until 2000, Citizens Communications Company until 2008, and Frontier Communications Corporation until 2020, as a communications provider with a fiber-optic network and cloud-based services, Frontier offers broadband internet, digital television, and computer technical support to residential and business customers in 25 states. In some areas it also offers home phone services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windstream Holdings</span> Provider of voice and data network communications

Windstream Holdings, Inc., also doing business as Windstream Communications or Windstream, is a provider of voice and data network communications, and managed services, to businesses in the United States. The company also offers residential broadband, phone and digital streaming TV services to consumers within its coverage area. It is the ninth largest residential telephone provider in the country with service covering more than 8.1 million people in 21 states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RCN Corporation</span> American cable television, telephone, and Internet service provider

RCN Corporation, originally Residential Communications Network, founded in 1993 and based in Princeton, New Jersey, was the first American facilities-based ("overbuild") provider of bundled cable telephony, cable television, and internet service delivered over its own hybrid fiber-coaxial local network as well as dialup and DSL Internet service to consumers in the Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, the Lehigh Valley in eastern Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. areas.

@Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their first CEO, as a joint venture to produce high-speed cable Internet service through two-way television cable infrastructure. At the company's peak it provided high speed Internet service for 4.1 million subscribers in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the Benelux nations. The company operated as four joint ventures, three of which were international. In 1999, the company acquired Excite. In 2008, @Home was merged into Ziggo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breezeline</span> American telecommunications company

Breezeline is the trade name for the United States operations of Cogeco Communications, constituting the 8th largest cable operator in the United States, based on the number of television service customers served. The company currently provides TV, Internet and phone services using a combined coaxial cable & fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. Breezeline currently has approximately 707,000 broadband customers located in twelve states: New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, South Carolina, and Florida. The company is headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sure (company)</span> Telecommunications company

Sure, a trading brand of Batelco, is a telecommunications company in the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, the Falkland Islands, St. Helena, Ascension Island, and the British Indian Ocean Territory. Sure is the largest tri-island mobile operator across the Channel Islands and Isle of Man.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet in South Africa</span> Overview of the Internet in South Africa

The Internet in South Africa, one of the most technologically resourced countries on the African continent, is expanding. The internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .za is managed and regulated by the .za Domain Name Authority (.ZADNA) and was granted to South Africa by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1990. Over 60% of Internet traffic generated on the African continent originates from South Africa. As of 2020, 41.5 million people were Internet users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NebuAd</span> American online advertising company

NebuAd was an American online advertising company based in Redwood City, California, with offices in New York and London and was funded by the investment companies Sierra Ventures and Menlo Ventures. It was one of several companies which originally developed behavioral targeting advertising systems, and sought deals with ISPs to enable them to analyse customer's websurfing habits in order to provide them with more relevant, micro-targeted advertising. Phorm was a similar company operating out of Europe. Adzilla and Project Rialto also appear to be developing similar systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wave Broadband</span>

WaveDivision Holdings, LLC, doing business as Wave Broadband, is an American provider of residential, business, and enterprise class cable TV, broadband Internet, and telephone services to around 455,000 customers in Washington, Oregon, and California. Wave provides services via their own fiber-optic network and has approximately 1,300+ employees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberty Puerto Rico</span> Telecommunications company in Puerto Rico

Liberty Communications of Puerto Rico LLC is a telecommunications company that provides broadband Internet access, VoIP, television and wireless services covering the entire island of Puerto Rico. The company is headquartered in San Juan and has over a million television subscribers and over 1 million data customers.

Full Channel, Inc. was an American pay television and telecommunications provider set in Rhode Island. At the time of its acquisition by CountryWide Broadband it was the third-largest cable television and Internet service provider in the state. Its wired communications network was available to the approximately 50,000 residents of Bristol County, Rhode Island. Full Channel's main office was at 57 Everett Street in Warren, Rhode Island, U.S.

Stargate Industries, Inc. was an Internet service provider that started in 1994, providing dial-up access in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. Stargate expanded its service territory and began offering other services as the company grew, such as dedicated Internet access using leased lines and DSL, data center services, co-location, and professional services, such as Web development. The company grew rapidly throughout the late 1990s through both organic growth and through the acquisitions of other providers, becoming the largest locally owned Internet service provider in western Pennsylvania, with customer count of nearly 100,000, and employing about 450 people at its peak.

Optimum is an American telecommunications brand owned and operated by Altice USA. It is the fourth largest cable provider in the United States and a Fortune 500 company. Optimum offers Internet, television, mobile and home phone serving in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Long Island and New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CityFibre</span> British network provider

CityFibre is an independent British telecommunications network provider, providing gigabit-capable FTTP broadband across the UK. It is the third-largest network provider in the UK, after Openreach and Virgin Media. It is considered one of the UK's "altnets", in reference to being an alternative to Openreach.

References

  1. "Here's How to Contact Us – Broadstripe: An Anne Arundel Broadband Company".
  2. 1 2 October 2014, Jeff Baumgartner 16 (16 October 2014). "WOW Means Business In Maryland". Multichannel News. Retrieved 2021-06-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  3. Thimangu, Patrick L. (25 November 2007). "Shreffler boosts Broadstripe with $125 million acquisition".
  4. Louis, St. (1 October 2007). "Millennium changes name to Broadstripe".
  5. Louis, St. (29 August 2008). "Prilick new CEO of Broadstripe".
  6. Louis, St. (14 August 2009). "Bankrupt Broadstripe overhauls management, spends $20M on network".
  7. Volkmann, Kelsey (2 January 2009). "Broadstripe files Chapter 11".
  8. Bankruptcy Court of Delaware, Chapter 11, Case No. 09-10006 (CSS)
  9. Rochelle, Bill (3 November 2010). "Boston Generating, Lehman, TerreStar: Bankruptcy". Bloomberg.
  10. Vargas, Harold (26 August 2011). "Broadstripe Communications exits cable business with sale to WaveDivision And WideOpenWest". Screen Digest i. Retrieved 3 February 2012.
  11. "Broadstripe News". 13 January 2012. Archived from the original on 15 February 2012. Retrieved 3 February 2012.