Adelphia Snares 115,000 AT&T Subs

Adelphia Communications has spent $300 million to acquire 115,000 subscribers from AT&T. The Coudersport, Pa., multiple systems operator (MSO) will pay $73 million in stock and $227 million in cash for the subs, which comes to about $2.07 per subscriber.

“They’re going to be mostly in Central Pennsylvania,” said an Adelphia spokesman. “It falls naturally in place with our current holdings along our PONY (the Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York) cluster.”

That cluster is based on a fiber that Adelphia runs from Buffalo to Coudersport to Pittsburgh and on to Cleveland, through Erie and back into Buffalo, he added. Most cable operations are moving toward more-clustered operations, bunching their subscribers along fiber routes to enhance operations for services like digital cable and high-speed data, and to reduce operating costs.

AT&T, the country’s largest cable TV operator, has been selling cable systems and other assets to reduce debt. It previously agreed to sell $4 billion in systems with more than one million subscribers. AT&T is in the process of breaking into three companies, with AT&T Broadband handling the cable part of the business.

The additional 115,000 subscribers will not affect Adelphia’s ranking as the nation’s sixth largest MSO with 5.7 million customers.