This week’s List features Internet Service Providers, ranked by the number of Hawaii subscribers. With 476,000 subscribers, Spectrum is the No. 1 company on the List.
Pacific Business News checked in with Gregg Fujimoto, Spectrum’s senior vice president of field operations – Hawaii, to talk about the company’s strategy in growing its customer base and more.
What is Spectrum’s strategy in growing and retaining its customer base? Our strategy is focused on delivering the best connectivity products that improve people’s lives. We continue to make long-term investments in the growth of the business through our strategy centered on evolution, expansion and execution:
- We are evolving our network to deliver faster speeds to our customers.
- We are expanding our network to bring our broadband services to more underserved areas.
- We continue to focus on execution and prioritizing the customer experience and customer satisfaction, which will drive customer growth.
What is currently Spectrum’s biggest priority when it comes to its Hawaii operations? We have a network evolution underway to provide symmetrical and multiple gigabit speeds in Hawaii and across our 41-state service area. … In the Hawaii market, we have hundreds of employees working every day to deliver the best broadband experience: working in customers’ homes and businesses, serving customers over the phone and in Spectrum stores, and monitoring, maintaining and evolving our network for the future.
Our advanced network monitoring even gives us the ability to proactively troubleshoot potential service issues, often before a customer even notices any impact to their service. Spectrum logged 600,000 proactive customer visits in 2022 and expects to exceed one million in 2023.
We are investing in our employees by providing competitive pay, attractive and comprehensive benefits, and opportunities for career growth and advancement.
We continue to work around the clock to make repairs on parts of our network that [were] destroyed by the devastating fires in Lahaina and the surrounding areas.
The state is pushing for increased digital equity, including providing internet access to underserved communities. How does Spectrum see its role in this effort? In terms of the digital divide, we are addressing multiple aspects of the issue: affordability, access and digital skill-building — and our employees have the experience and capacity to do so on a wide scale, across more than 56 million homes and small businesses and growing in 41 states, including Hawaii.
When it comes to affordability, Spectrum was a day one participant in the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program, which makes quality, high-speed internet service available at a low — or even at no — cost to eligible families in financial need. All Spectrum Internet plans are eligible for ACP credits. Spectrum Internet plans also have customer-friendly packaging and pricing with no modem fees, data caps or contracts.
In addition, Spectrum has awarded more than $275,000 to local organizations in Hawaii through Spectrum Digital Education grants since 2017, which support broadband technology programs, education and training in unserved and underserved communities throughout the company’s service area.
Fujimoto also noted that Spectrum has awarded more than $100,000 to the community locally through an employee grant program since 2019.
“Spectrum Employee Community Grants are designed to assist nonprofits with whom our employees have relationships and that provide social services needs to the communities we serve,” he said.
In other Spectrum news nationally, the company announced earlier this week that it launched a new streaming platform in partnership with Comcast. Called Xumo, the company described it as “streaming simplified” in the announcement, and the first product released is the Xumo Stream Box, which integrates live TV and streaming apps.
