AllThingsD » Embarq

Netflix Hands Out Its ISP Report Cards. Clearwire, Please Get This One Signed by Your Parents.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 19:01:59 +0000

Here’s the report card that Netflix promised to produce on broadband providers’ performance yesterday. Which is really a not-so subtle salvo in a war of words between the streaming movie service and the ISP industry.

But then again, it’s not the most aggressive move Reed Hastings could make. Note that the chart Netflix provides makes it quite difficult to really evaluate broadband provider against broadband provider, without doing a whole lot of squinting.

And even then, I can’t tell which light-blue line represents CableOne and which one represents CenturyTel.

We do know, because Netflix already told us, that Charter gets the best marks. And it appears that Clearwire, the wireless service co-owned by Sprint and some of the big cable companies, ranks dead last.

The news that most of you care about: Time Warner Cable and Comcast, the nation’s two biggest cable companies, appear to be in the top part of Netflix’s rankings. I’m asking the company for clarification for those of us with decaying vision.

And here it is, via CNET–a top-to-bottom ranking:

1. Charter
2. Comcast
3. Time Warner
4. Cox
5. Suddenlink
6. Cablevision
7. Cable One
8. Verizon
9. AT&T
10. BellSouth
11. Embarq
12. Windstream
13. Qwest
14. Century Tel
15. Frontier
16. Clearwire

You can click on the chart below to see a larger version, and you can read a technical explanation of what it measures over at the official Netflix tech blog.

CenturyTel to Buy Embarq for $40.42 Per Share in Stock

Eric Savitz — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:30:49 +0000

CenturyTel (CTL) has agreed to acquire Embarq (EQ) for $11.6 billion in stock and the assumption of debt. The deal calls for each EQ share to be exchanged for 1.37 CTL shares, a 36 percent premium over Friday’s closing price. The deal includes the assumption of $5.8 billion in debt. EQ holders will own 66 percent of the combined company, with 34 percent for existing CTL holders.

CenturyTel said the transaction is expected to be accretive to free cash flow in 2010, the first full year after closing.

The two phone companies together have about eight million access lines and two million broadband customers. Combined, the company expect to have revenue for the 12 months through September in excess of $8.8 billion, pro forma EBITDA of about $4.2 billion, leverage of 2.1 times EBITDA and free cash flow of about $1.8 billion.

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Dial *611 to Activate Your New CEO

John Paczkowski — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:48:30 +0000

Sprint Nextel ended its two-month search for a new chief executive today, offering Dan Hesse ousted CEO Gary Forsee’s old office.

Hesse was formerly the CEO of Embarq, a local telco that Sprint spun off last year, and once ran AT&T’s mobile-phone business, so he’s certainly got the chops for the job. “His history in wireless is impeccable,” said IAG Research analyst Roger Entner. “He is certainly the best person that is currently available. Dan did a miraculous job at AT&T Wireless. If they would have kept him on as CEO, the wireless industry would look very different. AT&T would have remained a force to be reckoned with, rather than a company that just sort of withered away.”

Perhaps. Question is, can Hesse work similar miracles at Sprint, where operational troubles, falling subscriber numbers and declining profits are dragging the company deep into the mud.