Charter 2004 Annual Report Download - page 5

2004 Annual Report 3
service increase throughout the year.
We see a lot of future potential in these
advanced video services.
Our HSI service continued to be a
growth driver in 2004. We gained a net
356,600 customers during the year, an
increase of 23 percent over 2003 on a
pro forma basis. We added a number of
value-added features to our HSI platform
in 2004 including firewall and anti-virus
features, web filtering, spam filters,
anti-spyware and pop-up blocking, as
well as an enhanced portal.
Finally, we vastly expanded our tele-
phone availability in 2004. At December
31, 2004, we served 45,400 telephone
customers, up from 24,900 at the end
of 2003. The potential for growth is
even greater in the coming year with our
expanded telephone footprint. We have
deployed the triple play bundle — a
value-based package of video, HSI and
telephone — in several markets and
have been pleased with the success
to date. We have plans for additional
deployments in several key markets
in 2005.
Our Focus On Excellence for
2005 and Beyond:
We have begun an internal operational
improvement initiative called Focus On
Excellence to create a customer service
culture aimed at helping us gain new
customers and better serve the ones
we have.
Focus On Excellence is centered on four
key objectives:
delivering superior service through
our customer care centers;
delivering superior service in
technical operations and
network maintenance;
prioritizing resources to invest in
growth; and
demonstrating our unique value
proposition.
We have been extremely pleased
with the positive near-term results of this
on-going initiative.
Charter’s strength continues to be our
tremendously talented employees, who
realize customers have a choice in terms
of doing business with us. Our employees
also realize that success begins and ends
with the customer. We are focused on not
just meeting, but exceeding their expecta-
tions. Through operational improvements
and execution, we look to improve sales
and enhance future revenue and adjusted
EBITDA growth.
The year 2004 was important for
Charter — a year marked by change,
transformation and a striving for excel-
lence across the Company. We worked to
strengthen our businesses and successfully
addressed certain short-term financial
challenges facing us. And while we have
accomplished a great deal, there is much
left to be done as we enter our next phase
of development. Our Focus On Excellence
initiative is evolving the Charter culture
and we now have a re-energized commit-
ment to our vision and mission for the
Company. These actions, combined with
a focus on our core strengths and new
opportunities, mean that we are well
poised to deliver on our promise to be the
premier provider of in-home entertainment
and communications services.
Thank you for your continuing support.
Sincerely,
Robert P. May
Interim President and CEO
Paul G. Allen
Chairman
July 18, 2005
“Simply stated, our objective is to
unlock the unrealized value at all
levels of Charter, taking advantage
of our past investments to generate
future growth. We are confident
we have the infrastructure,
products, services, and
human resources to
achieve our goals.”