Charter Communications Isp

Each of these will be provided via Charter Communications' extensive analogue terrestrial fibre optic networks. Founded by three former senior officers of Cencom cable associates, Inc. 1994: Start of the takeover of CATV TV sets. 1998: Charters is taken over by Microsoft Corp., co-founder Paul Allen, for $4.5 billion.

1999: The Charter goes live in November after more than ten large purchases in one year. By the end of 1999, Charter Communications, Inc. was operating 6.2 million customer base underground communications equipment, making it the fourth-largest multi-system provider (MSO) in the United States after AT & T Corp.

Established in 1993, the business has grown through a range of bolt-on and bolt-on activities. It was bought for $4.5 billion in 1998 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who fused it with Marcus Cable, which he had previously bought. As Allen provided a large part of the funds to all, Charter undertook active mergers and acquisition activities in 1998 and 1999.

In 1999, the Group made eleven large corporate takeovers, which led to an IPO in November that generated approximately $3.5 billion. Founded in January 1993 by three former senior management members of St. Louis-based Cencom Cable Associates, Inc. In 1991, Cencom was taken over by Crown Media Inc.

As a result, Crown made an Initial Charter Outlay of several hundred thousand US Dollar and again obtained 51 per cent without the right to vote in the firm. Cencom' s charter was decided by Crown's plan to move its head office from St Louis to Dallas. Kent was elected to the Board and Wood was elected to the Board.

Initially, Charter was located in the west of St. Louis County in Cencom' s office space. They were expecting to purchase cables and started looking around the whole state. She also considered wired business such as telecommunication and videodata as well. The first time the Charter was adopted, the regulated framework for CATV changed.

Congressional Congress had just adopted a new wire law on President George Bush's right of appeal, but the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had not yet adopted all the rules to implement the new law. Charter made its first takeover announcement in February 1994. This would cost nearly $200 million to purchase ten wire harnesses in Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama.

McDonald Group in Birmingham, Alabama, and serviced around 100,000 customers in the southeast. Charter's policy at that point was to purchase smaller size equipment throughout the Southeast and ultimately go Public. Prices for wiring harnesses have risen sharply since Bell's local operations (RBOCs) such as Southwestern Bell began purchasing wiring harnesses in 1993.

In February 1993, Southwestern Bell spent approximately $2,888 per participant on a $650 million purchase. For the first takeover of Charter, the costs were approximately $1,500 to $2,000 per participant. Hallmark Cards in June 1994 divested its Crown Media Kabel affiliate to Charter and Marcus Cable for $900 million. Charters bought Crown wiring solutions for some 270,000 clients in Connecticut, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina and South Carolina.

It also managed Crown's connected wiring system, which serves a further 360,000 customers. Antarctica purchased the rest of the Crown Media cables. Charter and Marcus were expected to pay about $2,000 per participant. Charter, in collaboration with Kelso & Co., a financial services company, in January 1995 signed an agreement to purchase Gaylord Entertainment's Nashville-based cabling system for 180,000 California, North Carolina and South Carolina customers for approximately $370 million.

Mr Gaylord chose the charter kelso partner, CCT Holdings, via Century Communications, with whom it had also negotiated. It was concluded in April, bringing Charter's total number of cables to 850,000, and concluded in October, by which date Charter had over 900,000. Gaylord was one of Charter's first shareholders with a 20 per cent share in the business.

By mid-1995, Charter had collected another 29,000 CableSouth Inc. customers in the north and center of Alabama for approximately $50 million. In addition, it purchased Peachtree cable systems with 13,000 subscription customers in Georgia for $20 million. Simultaneously, the corporation offered a much greater wireless feature, Multimedia Inc.

Multimedia's multi-media Cable investments comprised 125 franchise companies with 450,000 customers, mainly in Kansas, North Carolina and Oklahoma. Charter's tender bidders were Kelso & Co. and Ellis Communications. It competed against a group under the leadership of National Broadcasting Co., which includes TCI and others, but Multimedia was divested to Gannett Company Inc. for $1.7 billion in 1994.

Charter was then the fifteenth biggest MSO in the United States. Charter bought WIBV(AM), which serves the St. Louis area, in March 1996 for between $1 million and $1.5 million. It bought the management of Cencom's cables in April for $211.1 million.

Those schemes operated 100,000 participants in eight states. Charter increased its stake in the Southern Californian wire markets in August by purchasing CVI Wire for an unpublished amount. At CVI, 67,000 clients were serviced in Long Beach and Signal Hill, while Charter had more than 250,000 clients in other Southern California states.

The 14th Charter purchase - the 37,000-subscriber Price Cable of Hickory, North Carolina - brought the February 1997 subscription brand to over one million. From 1993 to 1997, Charter borrowed more than $2 billion in capital and liabilities to finance its own mergers and acquisitions. Charter is the world's largest private bank. Kelso & Co.'s investments followed an urbane clusters approach that resulted in 230,000 participants in St. Louis, 250,000 in the Los Angeles area, and 100,000 in the Northeast, particularly Hartford and New York.

Charterhouse Group International, another finance provider, was commissioned to win more than 400,000 customers in the southeast of the USA. In 1997, Charter tried to purchase the 230,000 subscriber wire harnesses of the US West Media Group in Minneapolis-St. Paul for $600 million. In April 1998, the MediaOne Group, a US West affiliate, had to make charter payments of between 30 and 50 million dollars in order to obtain the cables.

In the second half of 1997, Charter added 70,000 additional Long Beach, California residents with the acquisition of KC Cable Associates LP for $150 million. Charter in September 1997 heralded the acquisition of 117,000 subscriber California and Utah based Sonic Communications wiring equipment. This transaction was completed in May 1998 and Charter advanced to the top ten among them.

Others have not been able to extend the Charter's system. Charter's offering for a 300,000 subscribers Las Vegas system was surpassed by Cox Communications' $1.3 billion offering, and Dallas-based Marcus Cable went to businessman Paul Allen for $2.8 billion. After buying Marcus Cable, Allen Charter purchased for $4.5 billion, or about $3,800 per participant.

Allen' s interest in wire features may have been fuelled by Bill Gates' $1 billion 1997 in Comcast. Cabling was now seen as the best way to realize this dream by providing high-speed service over the Web to U.S. households. Mr. Kent has been appointed Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the new corporation, which combines Charter's 139 wire harnesses in 17 states with those of Marcus in six.

Marcus and Charter combined to create the 7th biggest MSO in the United States with 2.4 million clients. At the end of 1998, Jeffrey Marcus had abandoned the Charter to move to Chancellor Media and Babcock was appointed Chair. And two Marcus Cable senior officers were also fired after having servitude issues in Fort Worth and other North Texas towns attributed to mismanagement.

Charter entered into an arrangement in September 1998 with EarthLink, one of the United States' major independents of ISPs (Internet Services Providers), under which EarthLink offers Charter's residential subscribers via modem connection to the United States. Charter pipeline services, as they were known, began in Southern California in 1997. Finally, the new deal would encompass Charter's 19-country business and open EarthLink to a 1.8 million customer population.

Charter in 1998 recorded a net deficit of 535.4 million dollars with a turnover of 2.7 billion dollars. Charter added 68,000 Southern California customers in January 1999 with the addition of four Stamford, Connecticut-based American cable entertainment cables. Following the transaction, Charter would have more than 500,000 season tickets in the area.

In January, Charter also entered into a $2.4 billion transaction with TCI Inc. to buy 60 per cent of InterMedia Partners' subscription customers, the 10th MSO. Charters would win 400,000 InterMedia customers, mainly in the southeast, for an estimate of $1.3 billion. Under the agreement, Charter would transfer approximately 140,000 of its customers to TCI.

When TCI was taken over by AT & T. In February 1999 Charter made several purchases and added one million subscription customers. At the end of the last quarter, it had around 3.33 million subscription customers following the completion of the previously reported deals and the merger with Marcus Cable.

As a result of the acquisition, Charter would become the 6th biggest US CATV provider. These include 460,000 customers of Rifkin Acquisition Partners and InterLink Communications who bought 460,000 pairs of cables for an approximately $1.5 billion purchase price. It has also gained 173,000 subscription customers, primarily in the center of Massachusetts, from New Jersey-based Greater Media Inc.

in Philadelphia and served 79,000 Comcast subscriptionists. The company strengthened its southeastern footprint by purchasing Renaissance Media Group, a New York based alliance that serves 130,000 clients near New Orleans, West Mississippi, and Jackson, Tennessee. The SEC registrations needed before reselling $3 billion dollars of notes to repay debts at higher interest rates resulted in Allen having personal investments of approximately $4.6 billion to fund $10.6 billion of wire purchases, Kabel Allen's largest individual outlay.

Charter in March 1999 acknowledged rumours that it was intending an IPO in the second half of 1999. In the same months, Charter purchased a suite of southeastern and northeastern wiring harnesses with the $550 million takeover of New Jersey-based Helicon Cable Communications. Some 171,000 clients in eight countries were serviced by these products.

Charters was paying about $3,200 per subscription. All of them had spent $11. 2 billion for wireless features in the past year to succeed with more. The Dallas-Fort Worth Dallas cables groups, trading under Marcus Cable, began operating under their new name Charter Communications in April. Charter Avalon in May purchased Avalon Cable TV for $845 million and added 260,000 additional customers at a price of approximately $3,250 per customer.

Charter 3 gave the takeover. Including 9 million clients and all upcoming mergers and acquisition activities. In 1998, Avalon took over most of its clients from cable Michigan Inc. when it purchased the 220,000 subscriber wire enterprise for $473 million. Charter also purchased a Vista Communications cabling system in Smyrna, Georgia, for $125 million.

Charter declared in May that it would take over Falcon cable TV from Los Angeles for 3.6 billion dollars. It would bring Charter a combined subscriber base of around five million and would bring it up the ranking from fifth to forth MSO. It was the 8th biggest U.S. CATV network provider with approximately one million users in 27 states, mainly in non-urban areas.

This was the 9th purchase of Charter in 1999, and certainly not the last. The 10th purchase of Charter in 1999 concerned Fanch Communications Inc. in Denver. Charter was said to have payed $2 billion, or $4,000 per participant. As a result of the takeover Charter received a 5th place in all. Charter was the 4th biggest MSO after AT & T with 16 million customers, Time Warner with 12 million and Comcast with 6.2 million.

Included in the numbers are the outstanding M&A transactions at that date. Charter was the winning bidder in July for the acquisition of New York-based Bresnan Communications after it received bids before the IPO. Bresnan was established in 1984 by the trailblazer of the wire and cable manufacturing business, William J. Bresnan. Most of its schemes had been refurbished and enhanced and it had provided high-speed web services in about half of its market.

The charter bid of $3. 1 billion gave it an additional 690,000 participants at a cost of approximately $4,500 per participant, of which 298,000 in Michigan, 221,000 in Minnesota, 110,000 in Wisconsin, and 61,000 in Nebraska. This takeover brought Charter a further 6.2 million customers. The $3.2 billion Bresnan deal fuelled much debate that the Charter would soon go out to the people.

An analyst thought that while Paul Allen had "deep pockets", the Charter would need capital funding, which would offer a publicly offered share in order to make further purchases. In late July Charter submitted to the SEC documentation for one of the biggest IPOs of all times. Until then, the takeovers of Charter were mainly funded by the inclusion of Allen against his Microsoft stocks valued at 28 billion dollars.

Estimates have it that he had tied up $11 billion of his own funds to fund $21.8 billion acquisition between March 1998 and mid-1999. Charter went publicly listed in November 1999 and collected $3.2 billion by selling 170 million equities, or 60 per cent of its capital, at $19 per each.

Undererwriters had an ancillary 25 million stock allocations to subsequently resell, which could push Charter's GDP to $3.7 billion. Charter's post-IPO policy was to introduce DSL in its system and provide high-speed connectivity via modem. The Charter was highly indebted at the point in going public, with the debt-equity ratio more than seven fold the year' s net liquid assets.

It had $9.4 billion in outstanding takeovers, among them significant transactions for Falcon cable TV, Fanch Communications and Avalon cables. As soon as these transactions were concluded in November 1999, the Charter would have to make massive investments in modernising its system. Besides the charter, RCN also belonged to the syndicate, a firm devoted to building over legacy cables with its own high-speed networks.

Shortly before the Charter IPO, Allen had spent $1.65 billion on RCN. Breitbandpartner would work together to create and provide contents and service for Charter's CATV-clients. charter also began exchanging clients with other regimes to enhance the geographical clusters of its regimes. A Memorandum of Understanding was concluded with AT & T in December 1999 for the exchange of 1.

Three million CAT operators in St. Louis, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri. It would make Charter the dominating MSO in its home St. Louis charter with 500,000 season ticket holders and combine them with season ticket holders in Illinois to form an 800,000 season ticket group. According to Charter, its St. Louis clients would be the first to be provided with progressive features such as wireline telephony, mobile interactivity and high-speed connectivity.

Under the agreement, Charter would acquire a combined 704,000 AT & T charter members in return for 632,000 charter members in California, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Fort Worth, Texas. As most of the coveted ready-to-sale wireless signal converters have been purchased by the industry's key stakeholders, market researchers expect more customer interaction in the wire and cable area.

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