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Charter Communications could announce as early as tomorrow its intention to acquire Time Warner Cable for nearly $55.1 billion in cash and stock and Bright House Networks as part of a separate transaction worth north of $10 billion to create the country’s second largest cable operator under the Charter Spectrum brand.
Bloomberg News reports Charter will offer $195 a share — $100 in cash and the rest in Charter stock for Time Warner. The deal will load down Charter in debt. Several Wall Street banks spent more than two weeks assembling a large financing package, but even that would not be enough to seal a deal. Dr. John Malone’s Liberty Broadband, Charter’s largest shareholder, has agreed to inject $5 billion in Charter stock purchases to help fund the deal.
Unlike the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, this one includes a $2 billion deal breakup fee, payable if the merger falls apart. Analysts predict a possible rival bid for Time Warner Cable by Drahi’s Altice SA as well as antitrust concerns.
The deal would quadruple the size of Charter Communications overnight and would represent a massive change for Time Warner Cable customers. Charter uses a simplified pricing approach with fewer choices for Internet and television service, but that could come at a significantly higher price than what Time Warner Cable customers are used to paying. Charter is now advertising “no data caps” which is good news, although how long that lasts is anyone’s guess.
The future of Time Warner Cable’s Maxx upgrade program is in doubt if Charter successfully buys the company. Charter’s proposal to acquire Time Warner Cable in 2014 offered a more modest upgrade plan.
Stop the Cap! will go into more detail about what subscribers can expect as more details become available.
Ugh. If this happens, I’m either going to the dreaded AT&T or moving to an apartment where I can get Google Fiber or Grande.
your lucky im stuck with eather cox cox cox or century the lost link who has max 20/896 have the 100/10 line from cox now
FWIW TWC’s standard tier costs less than Charter’s does, from what I gather, if you include modem rental. $58 + $8 per month for 50/5 adds up. And then taxes and fees on top of that.
Hopefully Charter isn’t too quick at “harmonizing” tiers though…that would mean giving up a lot of (particularly upload) speed.
The problem is on the low end. Charter only has two speed tiers, Time Warner has a $14.99 basic Internet and a low end 6Mbps tier that are much less expensive. Both would be gone if Charter keeps its “two tiers” policy and that would lead to much higher Internet pricing.
Living in rochester, ny We have very few choices when it comes to internet. Unreliable and slow frontier DSL, Or reliable
“decent” TWC. I say decent because for what TWC charges here..You get royally screwed. used to be 40 bucks for 20Mbits Now its more like 65 bucks for 20Mbits. Greedy big cable. Will it change with Charter? Doubt it. Big Cable NEEDS TO GO.
We can’t win.