A Texas twosome

TW and TCI link $1.3 bil joint cable venture

By MARTIN PEERS

NEW YORK -- Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc. have completed a $1.32 billion cable joint venture covering systems in Texas with more than 1 million customers between them, the companies said Monday.

Each cabler contributed systems serving about 540,000 customers in Houston and southern Texas. The 50/50 joint venture will be managed by Time Warner.

Each of the companies transferred about $640 million of debt onto the joint venture's balance sheet.

TCI's courtship rituals

The partnership is the latest in a long list into which TCI has entered in the past couple of years as it has streamlined its unwieldy collection of cable systems scattered around the country, transferring pockets of systems into joint ventures with other cablers. For the most part, those other cablers have taken over the management of the partnerships, leaving TCI to focus its attention on a smaller group of systems with bigger geographic footprints.

The Texas joint venture is one of three deals struck between TCI and Time Warner, the top two cablers. The companies also formed a partnership in Kansas City and have signed a definitive agreement on a series of system trades.