Number for Charter Cable

These are not cable operators, but rather competitors in many of the same enterprises. In order to comprehend this latest deal, you must first forgot about TV. Charter, TWC and Bright House may be best known for offering American TV services, but this deal has been in decline for many years. Instead, consider them as ISPs with a shrinking side stream on TV.

The cable operators still get more revenues from TV than from the web, but these connections are also growing together. At any rate, wideband is a more profitable type of online TV than cable, requiring high licensing fees. ISPs are also less vulnerable to rivalry. Have a look at Time Warner Cable's consumer bill, which was $105.96 at the end of 2014.

Whilst the TV rate has remained constant for several years, the cost of access to the web has increased, rising by 21% in the last two years. Wideband connectivity is clearly the only possible resource for TWC's further expansion. There are the same tendencies with Charter, Bright House and other cable operators. During the first three months of this year Charter was losing 7,000 TV subscribers, but gaining 125,000 online subscribers, and its annual budget bill rose slightly to $112.25 on the average.

As soon as you realize that the US cable company is consolidating its business of providing services to the web, you need to look at some charts to see which parts of the nation will be affected. The TWC is appealing to a purchaser as its areas for high-speed connectivity services cover the sought-after New York City and Los Angeles markets:

Smaller than Time Warner Cable, Charter does cover complimentary areas of the USA, some of which are directly adjacent: The Bright House is much smaller than Charter or Time Warner Cable, with slightly more than 2 million clients, mainly in Florida: The merger of the three businesses will create a huge ISP that stands behind only Comcast in scale and is represented in most of the east United States.

This new entity could better competing with other types of ISPs, such as fibre optic links (offered by Verizon and AT&T) and satellites (DirectTV and Dish). A number of these rivals, as well as technological firms such as Sony and Apple, are researching new ways of watching TV over the web or have already started doing so.

Don't be amazed if Charter TWC-Bright House gets into this deal, which is not necessarily restricted to the areas where they offer connectivity. A last thing: Cable isn't Warner, what you believe or don't believe - it's a completely different kind of medias that Warner Bros., HBO, etc. has. They are constantly puzzled, which is not good for Times Warner, as it is one of the most disliked brand names in the USA.

When Time Warner Cable is rebranded as Charter as part of this process of consolidating, Time Warner could be the largest beneficiary of the entire transaction.