Windstream COO departs

Keith Paglusch, chief operating officer of Windstream Communications until today, has left the company.

Paglusch was an 18-year veteran of Sprint, including serving as senior vice president of operations for Sprint PCS. Prior to Sprint, he worked at Mountain Bell/AT&T and Southwestern Bell. Just before coming to Windstream in March 2006 as it spun off from Alltel and merged with Valor Communications, Paglusch was executive vice president of operations for Florida-based Global Signal.

Despite an extensive wireless background, Paglusch was not a proponent of Windstream jumping back into the wireless business with its own infrastructure. Nor did he support investing in fiber-based IPTV at this stage of its development.

The company said it has no immediate plans to fill the vacated position. CEO Jeff Gardner will assume the responsibilities of COO. Nor does Windstream comment on personnel issues, however a spokesman said, “We are very pleased with our overall performance in the first year as a public company, and this transition will allow Jeff to work more closely with the operations team on a day-to-day basis.”

Yesterday, the FCC approved Windstream’s $585 million proposed acquisition of CT Communications. And last week in its quarterly earnings report, the company reported a 13% increase in revenue over the prior year to $827 million. Operating income also increased by 58% to $292 million and its average revenue per user grew by 9%.

While Windstream lost 35,000 access lines in the quarter, it was 7% better than the previous quarter and it did add 37,000 broadband users. Year-over-year, the company grew its broadband subscribers by 37% and now has approximately 753,000.