[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      GLENN JONES: CABLE VISIONARY

                                 ______


                         HON. THOMAS J. MANTON

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, October 5, 1994

  Mr. MANTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the attention of my 
colleagues an article regarding Glenn Jones which appeared in the 
September 26 edition of Business Week. Glenn Jones is the chairman of 
Jones Intercable, our Nation's seventh largest cable operator.
  Mr. Speaker, the Business Week article is extremely timely because 
the cable industry is in a state of rapid technological transformation. 
At the cutting edge of this transformation is Glenn Jones, who has been 
on the forefront of such important developments in cable technology 
such as using fiber optic backbones for cable systems, implementing 
joint cable telephone systems, bringing individual inventors into cable 
limited partnerships, and seeking telecommunications markets in other 
parts of the world.
  As the Business Week article correctly points out, Glenn Jones has 
been very successful. His net worth has been pegged at $300 million. 
Glenn Jones, however, is an important visionary who has not chosen 
simply to acquire wealth, but rather to spend a sizable portion of his 
fortune to transform cable technology into a vehicle for raising the 
intellectual capacity of our Nation. For the past 5 years, Glenn Jones 
has put more than $30 million of his wealth into Mind Extension 
University, a long-distance learning project that permits Americans to 
obtain a college education without traveling to a college classroom. 
Mind Extension University has vast potential for every region of the 
country, from inner cities, where single-income parents struggle to 
find time to obtain a degree, to people in rural communities which are 
hundreds of miles from the nearest campus.
  Mr. Speaker, Glenn Jones always is on the move. Even as Mind 
Extension University continues to evolve and grow, he is now hard at 
work in developing a new cable programming service devoted to computer 
science and leasing satellite transponder space through his Jones 
Spacelink subsidiary. During the past several years, critics of the 
cable industry, both in and out of Congress, have suggested the cable 
industry has become staid and complacent. While there are numerous 
important success stories within the industry that prove that charge is 
false, none is more compelling than the story of Glenn Jones. I urge my 
colleagues to read the Business Week article, and I ask that it be 
included in the Record at this point.

                 The Expanding Universe of Glenn Jones

       Employee meetings at the Englewood, Colo., headquarters of 
     Jones Intercable Inc. are hard to miss. ``It's the sound of 
     the bagpipes,'' says Robert Luff, the company's former chief 
     technology officer. Summoned by kilted musicians, employees 
     attend ``state-of-the-fleet meetings.''
       That's fleet as in spaceships, reflecting the founder's 
     fascination with the science fiction classic ``Dune.'' 
     There's also the company's Medallion of the Alliance, awarded 
     to employees who have achieved the rank of ``dragon slayer'' 
     by beating back the fire-breathing challenges of the day.
       True north.--To the uninitiated it may sound less like a 
     day at the office than one at a theme park. But to the 
     faithful at Jones Intercable, the nation's seventh-largest 
     cable operator, such corporate flamboyance is simply 
     testimony to the entrepreneurial brilliance of founder Glenn 
     R. Jones. The 64-year-old Jones, a onetime bomb-disposal 
     expert for the U.S. Navy, is known as much for his offbeat 
     enthusiasms as for making his $683 million-a-year cable-
     television empire one of the most innovative in the industry. 
     ``Glenn's a dreamer, and sometimes that makes him seem a 
     little different,'' says Bill Daniels, a Denver-based 
     investment banker who specializes in cable TV. ``But his 
     dreams have turned out pretty well.''
       Indeed, driven by what Jones calls his ``own North Star,'' 
     his company was among the first to replace old-style coaxial 
     cable with high-performance optical fiber and to secure a 
     European beachhead. Both moves have since paid huge 
     dividends. In July, Intercable folded its six British cable 
     franchises into a company controlled by Bell Canada 
     International Inc., getting in return a 14% stake in Bell 
     Cablemedia PLC, Britain's largest public cable and telephone 
     company.
       Now, Jones is again pushing the frontiers. With the launch 
     of tests offering telephone services to its cable customers 
     outside Washington D.C. and Chicago later this year, 
     Intercable is rushing to become the first cable outfit to 
     counter the wave of telephone companies that are moving to 
     sell video services over phone lines. And Jones's ties to 
     Bell Canada will soon grow exponentially. By yearend, federal 
     approval is expected for BCI's December agreement to pay up 
     to $400 million for a 30% stake in Jones Intercable. The deal 
     would give Jones access to BCI technology he needs to expand 
     into phone and data services, as well as provide the muscle 
     to raise up to $1.6 billion to buy new cable systems.
       Jones has long excelled at deft management of cable 
     systems. Far ahead of competitors, he saw the advantage of 
     building systems in close regional clusters, concentrating on 
     upscale suburban areas such as Northern Virginia and outside 
     Chicago. Clustering cuts down on administrative and other 
     operational costs. Jones's systems are also among the most 
     technologically advanced, with fiber-optic cabling beginning 
     ahead of the pack in 1989. ``When you talk about vision and 
     getting somewhere first, Jones is usually at the top of the 
     list,'' says Sharan Stover, vice-president at cable rival 
     Tele-Communications Inc.
       The son of a Pennsylvania coal miner, Jones labored briefly 
     as a lawyer and found cable TV after an unsuccessful 1964 run 
     for Congress as a Goldwater Republican left him $40,000 in 
     debt. In an oft-repeated story, he borrowed $400 on his beat-
     up Volkswagen for the downpayment on a cable system that 
     served 150 homes in Georgetown, Colo. Borrowing again, he 
     bought two more systems.
       Then, he started dreaming bigger. ``I sat down and figured 
     that it would take $10 billion to cable all of America, and I 
     didn't have any way of getting that much,'' he says. So, 
     Jones copied the deals common in oil and gas, becoming the 
     first cable operator to finance growth through what became a 
     widely popular vehicle, limited partnerships. The 
     partnerships, which paid fees to his company for managing 
     cable systems owned by investors, shielded Jones from heavy 
     debt. As rising values brought new investors, shielded Jones 
     from heavy debt. As rising values brought new investors, the 
     network of cable systems Jones's companies own or manage has 
     grown to 55, with 1.3 million subscribers.
       Today, publicly held Jones Intercable and its sister 
     company, Jones Spacelink Ltd., have combined revenues of $299 
     million, up 15% from $260 million in 1992, while the 
     partnerships they manage have revenues of $386 million. Like 
     most cable operators, however, they lose money. Intercable 
     and Spacelink together lost $35 million in the fiscal year 
     ended in May, while the partnerships lost $73.3 million.
       But in the cable-TV industry, reported losses matter 
     little. Cable companies have enormous capital costs--and the 
     partnerships are designed to give tax losses to investors. 
     More important than producing earnings has been Jones's 
     ability to generate cash flow needed to fund expansion and 
     upgrade systems with fiber-optic cable. Still, the complex 
     web of partnerships and the relatively thin trading of its 
     stock have hurt Jones's tightly controlled public companies 
     on Wall Street. ``It's just not worth the time it takes to 
     understand it.'' says Kidder, Peabody & Co. analyst Alan 
     Gould, who follows one of Jones's partnerships.
       The complexity hasn't hurt Jones, however. He has amassed a 
     fortune estimated at more than $300 million by holding huge 
     blocks of both Intercable and Spacelink, as well as a 
     controlling stake in Jones Space Segment, a private company 
     that generates millions from the operating companies by 
     leasing satellite transponder space. A few years back. Jones 
     Intercable also paid its chairman $4.3 million for his stake 
     in Jones Galactic Radio, which provides stereo music to cable 
     subscribers, while other private companies owned by Jones 
     provide data and financial services and arrange deals for the 
     public cable companies.
       Jones's deal with BCI is expected to simplify the 
     structure, giving the company more allure on Wall Street. 
     Intercable and Spacelink will be merged and many of the 
     investment partnerships bought out. Although the deal will 
     cut Jones's personal stake in the merged companies to 35%--he 
     currently controls 86% of Spacelink and 48% of Intercable--it 
     will give him the funds to go shopping for more cable 
     systems. He'll also pour more money into his longtime 
     infatuation, Mind Extension University. Jones spent $30 
     million of his own to launch the seven-year-old cable 
     university, which offers college courses to some 26 million 
     cable homes.
       For Jones, a voracious reader who employs a full-time 
     staffer to summarize books for him, education is a mantra. 
     But he insists the money-losing Mind Extension University is 
     also a business in the making; he is currently launching 
     three new channels with courses in computers, foreign 
     languages, and health.
       Jones plots his empire's next move from a building just 
     outside Denver that is designed to give employees a grand 
     view of the Rocky Mountains. The waterfall in the atrium, he 
     admits, was inspired by a scene from ``Dune.'' His office 
     suite includes a ``war room'' with a console of TV screens 
     and electronic devices that would do that Starship Enterprise 
     proud.
       No question about it, there are few chief executives who do 
     things quite like Glenn Jones. Writing as ``Yankee Jones'' in 
     a series of books he has published called Briefcase Poetry, 
     Jones might be talking of himself in a poem entitled 
     ``Entrepreneur'': ``The dreamer is a practical man, he can do 
     things no one else can.'' And now he has the cash to turn 
     more of his dreams into reality.

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