Quantifying Cable's Churn

摘要

The popularity of advanced cable products, including rapid deployments of VoIP, has helped reduce the cable industry's customer attrition rate by 0.2% over the past three years. For the industry to maintain growth, it needs to first replace all the customers it has lost, then find new ones. Kagan analysis of churn data from select operators indicates cable subs on average disconnected video service at a rate of 2.4% per month in 2005. That's 29% on an annualized basis, which means a cable system's entire sub base effectively turns over every 3.4 years. Based on cable's average 65.3 mil. basic subs in 2005,29% churn yields 19.1 mil. total disconnected subscribers last year. Since luring new customers to the services costs substantially more than retaining existing ones, the cable industry can reap substantial benefits by further improving customer loyalty.