Charter announced today that it's buying Time Warner Cable, with the intent to bolster its number of subscribers across the States. With the purchase of Time Warner Cable, Charter also announced that it would acquire Bright House Networks for $10.4 billion.
The three companies will form a new company under the name New Charter, and have a total customer base of roughly 23.9 million, which would place the company in second place behind Comcast's 27 million strong customer base.
The statement from Charter:
"The combination of Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House will create a leading broadband services and technology company serving 23.9 million customers in 41 states. The announced transactions will drive investment into the combined entity's advanced broadband network, allow for wider deployment of new competitive facilities based WiFi networks in public places, and the footprint expansion of optical networks to serve the large marketplace of small and medium sized businesses. This will result in faster broadband speeds, better video products, including more high definition channels, more affordable phone service and more competition, for consumers and businesses."
The New Charter deal still needs to go through regulatory approval by the FCC. The most recent Time Warner Cable attempt by Comcast went through a barrage of hurdles and was ultimately canned at the regulatory stages. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, indicated that while the Charter and Time Warner Cable deal would go through the same scrutiny, he wasn't totally against such mergers as long as the results would be good for consumers.
According to a statement by Tom Wheeler:
“The FCC reviews every merger on its merits and determines whether it would be in the public interest. In applying the public interest test, an absence of harm is not sufficient. The Commission will look to see how American consumers would benefit if the deal were to be approved.”
This is the fourth time that Charter has tried to court Time Warner Cable.
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1LFByK7
