Time Warner Cable has issued their fourth quarter results, highlighting a combination of good and bad news for the cable carrier. The company lost 105,000 basic cable customers on the quarter, but added 56,000 digital cable customers, 122,000 broadband customers and 84,000 VoIP customers. Revenue rose 3% to $4.5 billion on the quarter, while net income for the quarter was $322 million. Time Warner Cable serves 12.8 million cable customers, 8.99 million broadband customers and 4.15 million VoIP customers.

Investors applauded the earnings -- especially the company's decision to approve a $1.60 per share annual dividend. Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, who like many investors is no fan of expensive network upgrades, issued a note proclaiming that the earnings were "precisely what the doctor ordered," adding the company is "the single most attractive name in our coverage universe, and by a wide margin." Moffett's cable lust is driven in part by Time Warner Cable's recently derailed attempt to impose high overage fees, and the fact that Time Warner Cable hasn't exactly made upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 a priority.

Time Warner Cable is less of a hit among consumers, many of whom are in less competitive markets, and see slower speeds as a result. The company has only upgraded parts of their New York City market with faster 50 Mbps speeds (at $99 a month), though on their investor conference call Time Warner cable COO Landel Hobbs promised they'd speed up deployment this year. According to Hobbs, just 2,000 subscribers have signed up for the faster service so far. Time Warner Cable's CAPEX for 2009 was $3.2 billion, a number they expect to keep below $3 billion for 2010.

CEO Glenn Britt spent a little time on the earnings conference call getting excited about the company's efforts to resell Clearwire WiMax service. "This will develop in exciting ways that we really can’t quite imagine today," says Britt of Mobile WiMax. "I think there’s going to be a whole array of products using these types of networks in the future," he says. Time Warner Cable began selling Mobile WiMax service late last year in portions of Dallas, North Carolina and Hawaii.

Time Warner Cable also stated on their earnings call that they'll have a few new projects coming down the pipeline in 2010, including a new phone portal, that will allow users to manage their phone account and access voicemail and caller ID via the Internet. The company also says they'll begin to market a multi-room DVR later in 2010.