WideOpenWest (WOW) is a regional cable broadband provider serving suburban markets across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, and Tennessee. WOW's core product is residential high-speed internet (HSD), which accounts for about 69% of total revenue and drives nearly all of the company's value. WOW operates two network types: a legacy hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) network in established markets offering speeds up to 1.2 Gbps, and a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in newer expansion markets offering symmetrical speeds up to 5 Gbps. About 81% of WOW's roughly 479,000 customers subscribe to HSD only. WOW also offers video (via a YouTube TV partnership) and telephony, but both are in secular decline and WOW is actively de-emphasizing them to improve margins. WOW charges subscribers a monthly fee tiered by speed, with HSD ARPU around $73.50/month. As the company sheds its video business and its high programming costs, its EBITDA margin expands. WOW also serves small and mid-sized businesses with fiber data, hosted voice, SIP trunking, and managed cloud services. WOW's growth strategy has two tracks: stabilizing its legacy HFC markets by reducing churn and lifting ARPU through speed upgrades and simplified pricing, and expanding into new suburban communities with FTTH greenfield builds, where WOW competes against incumbent cable operators with older networks. Greenfield markets are capital-intensive upfront but improve as penetration scales; WOW doubled its greenfield footprint in 2024 and is funding further expansion through a $200M term loan raised in late 2024.
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