Paul Allen's cable company charts Chapter 11 course

Charter Communications, the nation's fourth-largest cable company and a major component of Paul Allen's Vulcan, has turnaround experts on board and is prepping a Chapter 11 filing to restructure approximately $8 billion in debt.

The purchase of the St. Louis-based company in 1988 was a big component of Allen's "wired world" vision -- "I will finally have some wires for my wired world," he said back when he was purchasing both Charter and the quickly ingested Marcus Cable -- but the provider's had a hard time in the marketplace, ranking at or near the bottom of various customer-satisfaction polls over the years and getting a rare public warning from the Better Business Bureau in 2006.

Charter's Internet division also had the signal dishonor of ranking #114 -- dead last -- on Forrester Research's 2008 Customer Experience Rankings, released in December. (The video-service division shone at #110.) The operator currently serves 27 states and 5.5 million customers.

Meanwhile, the firm hasn't reported a profit since going public in 1999, though it has grown its subscriber base and even its revenues. But the economy is looming, and year-over-year growth in customers signing up for high-speed Net access or phone service was down by over 50%. Customers for basic and digital video, meanwhile, actually decreased in number; that's not news for basic video, which is on a multiyear (and probably terminal) downward trajectory, but it's a change for digital.

According to a statement by the company, the deal being worked out with creditors will lead to a Chapter 11 filing to be initiated on or around April 1. It is expected that trade creditors will be paid in full, and that Paul Allen with continue as an investor and retain the largest voting interest in the company.