Spectrum billing integration would greatly improve the customer experience. Back in July, I put out an article on Network World as an Update on Spectrum Billing Integration. At the time, the word we had was that in August the update would be complete merging the billing systems for Charter Spectrum, Bright House Networks, and Time Warner Cable. We specialize in Telecom Expense Management so we deal with these systems regularly.

Mergers and acquisitions have become the norm in telecom and system integration issues exist across the industry. Check out our blog on M&A’s in Telecom. Unfortunately, there has been no integration between the systems at Spectrum at this time.

Former Bright House customers can now log in and manage their bill like they used to but there’s no integration. Their old billing website was simply updated with Spectrum logos. Time Warner and Charter customers use a system which can accept payments but can’t provide additional account information.

This leads to errors in payments leaving accounts with credits and threats of service interruption. Payments taken over the phone by Spectrum don’t always hit accounts accurately and corrections take 30 days. How inconvenient! Unfortunately they’re top Tier ISP and the cable company for much of America. Their routes are typically different from the area ILEC and they’ll terminate in their own head ends rather than the phone company’s Central Offices. CLECs and other companies purchasing Type II links or 30 year IRUs will never be able to perform as well as the ILECs and MSOs that actually own the network.

At this time, we have no additional information as to when Spectrum’s billing systems will be integrated. It can be a frustrating process so feel free to contact us here for help or go to @Ask_Spectrum on Twitter. You can also follow this profile for updates on Spectrum and find outage information.