Company Overview

Key Financial Facts

2005 revenue: $5,254 million 1-yr. growth rate: 5.6 percent 

Company Overview

Paul Allen has to pay for all of his sports teams and film ventures somehow. Bill Gates' old Microsoft crony holds the cards as chairman and majority owner of Charter. The company offers cable television, digital cable, and high-speed Internet access to more than six million customers in 40 states. It operates through three divisions in approximately 4,200 locations. The company’s Wired World vision aims for cable to become the primary means by which news services are transmitted to homes and businesses. The company sees its recent move into VoIP (voice-over-Internet telephony)—as well as HDTV, digital telephone services, and interactive TV—as an important step in this direction. Paul Allen may not be with Microsoft any longer, but his ties there remain strong, as evidenced by Charter’s offering to its broadband customers of a start page co-branded with Microsoft’s MSN network of websites. In its efforts to continue improving the bottom line and focus on its core competencies, the company sold about $9 million in assets in 2006.