Like other cable MSOs, WOW! sees the business sector as a huge opportunity for growth. The Denver based service provider with operations in the Midwest and Southeast (through their Knology acquisition) has doubled their Huntsville, Alabama based business services customer service team to 60 employees. WOW! now serves enterprise, SMB, and wholesale customers in 19 markets.
“Business services is fundamental to our corporate strategy as we have identified a $3 billion market opportunity for businesses in our network footprint,” says a WOW! spokesperson in an emailed statement to Telecompetitor.
WOW! Business Services Growth
It’s a market they are aggressively pursuing. They now own and operate data centers in Columbus, Ohio; Cleveland, Ohio; and Tampa, Florida; all of which are fed by a 42,000 route-mile fiber network. According to the WOW! spokesperson, they currently count 45K business and wholesale customers across their footprint, which includes markets in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee.
WOW! joins a host of other cable MSOs who see enterprise and SMB opportunities as the perfect growth engine to help monetize their fiber rich networks. WOW! is seeing 20% year-over-year growth in this segment, according to their spokesperson.
Smaller and regional based cable companies are not lost on the fact that more and more companies (large and small) are adopting cloud based services, which require good sized quality bandwidth pipes to the business. Add to that, the range of applications that service providers can offer across those pipes, and you have a tremendous growing business opportunity.
It used to be a field dominated by telcos. But this business segment is now up for grabs and companies like WOW! intend to grab their fair share (or more), creating a robust competitive marketplace.
Editor’s Note – Hear directly from WOW! CEO Steve Cochran about these and other issues at the upcoming BroadbandVision show, where he is a keynote panelist.
