Adelphia Adds 65,000 Comcast Customers

Adelphia Communications has acquired 65,000 former Comcast Cable customers in Oxnard, Port Hueneme and Simi Valley, giving it about 65% of the cable market in Ventura County.

The move will not translate into any immediate service changes, said William Rosendahl, Adelphia regional vice president.

The Pennsylvania-based Adelphia is one of the largest cable operators in the nation, with more than 5.6 million customers--about 1.3 million of them in California. It’s also the largest in Ventura County, with 142,000 customers, Rosendahl said. Adelphia now provides cable service in portions of all 10 Ventura County cities and some of its unincorporated areas.

The deal with Comcast was a property swap, Rosendahl said. Adelphia acquired 375,000 customers in Southern California--making it the largest cable operator in this region--while Comcast acquired households on the East Coast.

“When you have a larger footprint, you can build, deploy and manage with economies of scale,” Rosendahl said.

He said the company’s new Ventura County customers can expect new services such as high-speed Internet access, long-distance telephone service and personal paging.

Other affected communities are in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties.