Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt says phone service is doing well

On the Call: Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt

While the cable TV industry has been fairly resilient in a sluggish economy, Time Warner Cable Inc. said Thursday that it’s not entirely immune to the drag.

CEO Glenn Britt said the slump in housing has affected business because fewer people buying new homes means fewer opportunities to sell them cable service. Also, foreclosed homes leads to closed accounts.

In the third quarter, subscriber growth slowed at the nation’s second largest cable TV operator. The company added 117,000 new lines of service encompassing video, Internet and phone services compared with 522,000 last year. While subscriber growth in video and Internet were in line with analysts’ expectations, phone didn’t do as well.

QUESTION: Just given how weak the economy is and how much cheaper your digital voice offering is, how come you are just not growing the product faster, especially given the fat market share still held by the regional bell operating companies?

ANSWER: I think that if you look at the enormous line losses the Bell companies are facing and dealing with, in some regard it’s amazing we are growing it as fast as we are.

There clearly is a lot of cord cutting going on — people going to cell phones and over the top providers — so we would like to grow faster, but I think it’s actually doing pretty well in comparison.