CEO of Cox Communications, Inc.
Name: James O. Robbins
Position: President and CEO of Cox Communications Inc.
Building a Strong Data Foundation in the Age of AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a key priority in the boardroom and across management —…
Learn More
Background: Robbins joined Cox as vice president of New York City operations
in 1983. He was named president in 1985 and became CEO in 1995 when the company
went public. Prior to joining Cox, Robbins was a vice president at Viacom Communications
Inc. from 1979 to 1983. He served in various management positions for Continental
Cablevision and Montachusett Cable Television from 1972 to 1979, and was managing
editor of WBZ-TV News in Boston from 1969 to 1972. He is the chairman of the
National Cable Television Association, and also is a member of C-SPAN’s Executive
Committee.
Education: Graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, B.A. in American
studies. He also has an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
Age: 59
Residence: Atlanta
Cox Communications, a Fortune 500 company and the country’s fourth-largest cable provider, is a multi-service broadband communications company serving 6.3 million customers nationwide. It offers both traditional analog-video and digital-video programming and also provides local and long distance telephone; high-speed Internet access and commercial voice and data services via Cox Business Services LLC. Since 1996, it has spent $435 million to build the fiber optic network extending throughout Rhode Island. Cox employs 1,170 people in the state, and more than 20,000 nationally.
PBN: Cox is really dominant in the Rhode Island market. Are there any other
areas where Cox has such a large market share?
ROBBINS: We’re pretty widespread in Rhode Island. One of the reasons
is because I think we’ve done a good job. The Public Utilities Commission would
not have allowed us to purchase, trade and acquire other systems around Rhode
Island if we weren’t doing a good job. I think that rings true in Louisiana,
Oklahoma and Arizona too, where we have a pretty big presence. But look, local
communities are very savvy. They know who’s doing a good job and who isn’t doing
a good job. And if you want to expand, that’s one of the tickets that has got
to be punched.
Just five or six years ago, Cox wasn’t in two of the three biggest businesses
that it has now: phone service and high-speed Internet. With the rapid growth
of those segments, is there a concern that it might be overwhelming from a customer-service
standpoint?
Well, we are trying to constantly evolve the business and grow the business, and the facility we see going up right behind us (Cox’s new New England headquarters, under construction on J.P. Murphy highway in West Warwick ) is testament to the fact that we’re hiring more employees to meet the demand. There’s no question that when you launch new businesses, you get some rough patches in the road where everybody is learning a little bit. But we’ve been at this since 1997 in other systems and we’ve learned a lot of things, and I think the New England rollout has been as smooth as any. We feel that you really only get one crack at the opportunity to sell you, as a video customer, high-speed Internet service or telephone service. If we don’t do it right, you’ve got no impetus to come back to us. I think we have been successful because our customer service is a cut above certainly what’s going on in the cable industry.
Cox recently raised prices in Rhode Island and other markets for its high-speed
Internet service, to about $40 a month. Is there any concern that price increases
will dent demand?
The evidence so far suggests not. I think the price value for that service is way above where we’ve got it priced, to be honest with you. We’ve been in the high-speed data business here for almost four years, and this is the second adjustment we’ve made in prices. And I think the fact that our business continues to grow, especially the data business, would suggest that customers think this is well worth the price we charge for it. That’s got to be our M.O.; we’ve got to provide a service that people are willing to pay for, and we think we’ve got this one right.
Cox has seen huge growth in its phone business – it’s now the 12th-largest
phone company in the country. Has the growth of that segment surprised you?
No. We cut our teeth in the phone business in the United Kingdom, in a joint venture through the early ’90s with Southwestern Bell. And we learned there that what the customers wanted was to deal with one vendor for their in-home services. So that suggested to us that this was an opportunity that we could bring back to the United States. For us, telephone is a small, incremental investment. We were able to come in and charge slightly less than the phone company on the primary line, and a little more than slightly less on the secondary line. But the most important aspect is the convenience of dealing with one company that people trust for all three services. So it’s really more a matter of customer convenience than it is about saving five bucks or whatever by dealing with Cox.
For the complete interview, visit our subscription Web site, or call (401) 273-2201, ext. 227 or 234.
