CABLE company NTL is making a determined effort to improve its battered reputation.

A new regional structure gives North-west managing director Alan Grant the chance to find out if the potential of this particular communications revolution can finally be achieved for domestic customers.

The company is undergoing major financial restructuring nationally to tackle a debt burden of something like £12 billion and it faces the future with 13,000 employees compared with the 21,000 it had at the beginning of 2001.

Telewest, the other main cable operator, has similar problems and industry analysts are repeating the prediction made over the years that the two companies will eventually merge.

I n Bolton, NTL Home is the latest custodian of the cable dream which began in the 1980s with Bolton Cablevision -- owned by the Pacific Telesis Group from San Francisco.

New York-based NYNEX CableComms took over in August, 1993 and set about investing £1 billion in a national network, much of it in the North-west.

Three years later -- after much anguish in some quarters about the digging-up of footpaths -- NYNEX sold the operation and passed the baton to Cable and Wireless Communications.

NTL, a Hampshire-based company with an American stock exchange listing, acquired C&W Communications' domestic business in 2000 -- together with its unenviable reputation for poor customer service.

After all this Bolton, something of a UK cable pioneer, has about 38,000 customers who take NTL's telephone, television and broadband internet services.

The cable network passes about 130,000 homes in the town and the company is obviously keen to build its customer base here and elsewhere.

Mr Grant, who is 52, was born in Manchester and returned to his home city in December when he moved into NTL's headquarters on the Concord Business Park in Wythenshawe.

He was head-hunted for the job after four and a half years in London as managing director of Dunlop Slazenger, the sports equipment firm.

During his varied career he has also been Executive Director of Initial Textile Services, Trade Director for Watney Truman and Sales Director for Wilsons Brewery in the North-west.

Mr Grant is now responsible for 350,000 North-west NTL Home customers and 950 employees (125 people left at the end of last year).

Conscious of past criticisms of service efficiency, he wants a considerable improvement in customers' experience of NTL

He says: "We are not yet where we want to be -- but we are working hard to get there and all our associates (employees) in the North-west share that objective."

When I interviewed Mr Grant he was keen to stress that a

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massive staff training exercise was in operation and that future policy would include courtesy calls to make sure customers were happy.

It was also planned within the next two months to make sure that the vast majority of North-west customer queries were answered at the Wythenshawe call centre rather than those in Scotland or Wales.

Also, shift patterns had been altered to allow more flexibility for customers who had difficulty getting through to the call centre.

The intention was "to bring the business closer to the customer."

Mr Grant is convinced he is now involved in a business which is "strongly profitable" and he is bullish about the future.

A rush of calls following the collapse of ITV Digital makes him think there is potential for significant business from former customers who still want digital services

But the greatest driver of the business in future is likely to be broad band.

"The demand for our high-speed internet access has far exceeded all our expectations," he said.

"We started the year with 15,000 broad band customers and we have now got just over 30,000."

The three-speed service, which costs between £14.99 and £49.99 per month, operates through digital boxes and allows speedy internet access for personal computer users.

A stand alone cable modem is expected to be available in September.

The much-vaunted internet through television service remains available, but it is clear that it is no longer high on the company's list of future priorities.

Other developments include a forthcoming announcement that 25 new digital television channels are to be made available to customers from May 29.

Mr Grant is convinced that the business is going forward as fewer customers leave -- called churn in the trade.

"Our churn has come down by four percentage points from last year and we expect it will be a further three percentage points by the year end," he added.

Alan Grant is pictured outside the Wythenshaw HQ.