If you are a Time Warner Cable customer, one of four things will happen by this time next year:

1. You will still be a Time Warner Cable customer if regulators shoot down its merger with Comcast;
2. You will be a Comcast customer;
3. You will be a Charter Communications customer;
4. You will be served by a brand new cable company temporarily dubbed “SpinCo,” owned partly by Comcast but managed by Charter.

Comcast and Charter this week reached an agreement on how to handle the 3.9 million Time Warner Cable customers Comcast intends to spin-off to keep its total subscriber numbers at a level they believe will appease regulators. The transaction will affect Time Warner customers in the midwest the most, particularly former Insight Cable customers.

Charter Communications will say goodbye to customers in California, New England, northern Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Virginia and parts of Tennessee. Most of those customers will now be served by Comcast. Among the regions affected: New York, Boston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Northern/Southern California, and Atlanta.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WISN Milwaukee First Comcast Now Charter 4-28-14.flv[/flv]

WISN in Milwaukee reports Time Warner Cable customers there were just getting used to the idea of Comcast and they are not happy service will be provided by Charter Communications instead. (2:03)

Comcast and Time Warner Cable will in turn give up many of its cable systems in the midwest, either transferring them to Charter or the “SpinCo” venture managed by Charter.

Charter will take over directly in Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Indiana and Alabama.

If you are a Comcast or Time Warner Cable customer next to a current Charter service area in Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Alabama, Eastern Tennessee, Kentucky or Wisconsin, chances are you will end up a subscriber of the “SpinCo” venture. That will prove a distinction without much difference to customers, because Charter will manage the day-to-day operations of the new cable company and has the right to eventually acquire it outright.

With the exception of a small handful of systems in western sections of Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, all of New England, New York, and the mid-Atlantic region will be serviced by Comcast.

With the exception of Cablevision in eastern New York, Comcast will be the dominant cable provider across New York State from Manhattan to Buffalo.

The agreement also includes a commitment by Charter to drop its opposition to the Time Warner Cable/Comcast merger.

“Today’s announcement from Comcast would, in essence, lead to the creation of a three-company cable cartel. Masquerading as subscriber divestitures, the agreement with Charter brings together the three largest cable providers, who account for 38% of cable subscribers and 45% of Internet subscribers,” the Writers Guild of America West said in a statement. “The decision of these three powerful companies to divide markets and share ownership of subscribers through a new publicly traded corporation is unprecedented and adds to the mounting evidence against the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger.”

The transaction is expected to be tax-free and will happen in three stages:

• Asset Sale: Charter acquires systems serving around 1.4 million former TWC customers for an estimated $7.3 billion in cash;
• Asset Transfer: Charter and Comcast transfer assets in a tax-free exchange involving around 1.6 million former TWC customers and about 1.6 million Charter customers;
• Asset Spin-off: Comcast will spin-off a new entity (“SpinCo”) composed of cable systems serving around 2.5 million Comcast customers to its shareholders, with Charter acquiring close to 33% of the equity of SpinCo in exchange for 13% of the equity of a new holding company of Charter.

Charter Communications would become the nation’s second largest cable operator if the deal is approved, owning outright systems with an estimated 5.7 million video customers and managing an extra 2.5 million SpinCo customers, together totaling more than 8.2 million video customers.

Comcast wanted the deal done quickly so it could begin lobbying Washington and other regulators with detailed divestiture plans to keep Comcast’s total subscribers to less than 30% of the national cable market.

Although Comcast will face tough competition in Time Warner Cable territories also served by Verizon FiOS, Charter and its managed SpinCo will compete primarily with AT&T U-verse. Just 1% of Charter’s territory is expected to see competition from Verizon’s fiber network.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Bloomberg Divesting Comcast Subs 4-28-14.flv[/flv]

Comcast agreed to divest 3.9 million customers to Charter Communications, potentially helping to ease the approval process for its merger with Time Warner Cable. Media Morph Chairman and Chief Strategist Shahid Khan and Bloomberg’s Paul Sweeney speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “In The Loop.” (6:23)

A 2011 state law largely written by Time Warner Cable will likely keep Charlotte, N.C. waiting for fiber broadband that nearby Salisbury has had since 2010.

North Carolina is dominated by Time Warner Cable, AT&T and CenturyLink. Google and AT&T recently expressed interest in bringing their fiber networks to the home in several cities in the state, but neither have put a shovel in the ground.

Fibrant, a community owned broadband provider in Salisbury, northeast of Charlotte, not only laid 250 miles of fiber optics, it has been open for business since November 2010. It was just in time for the publicly owned venture, joining a growing number of community providers like Wilson’s Greenlight and Mooresville, Davidson and Cornelius’ MI-Connection. Time Warner Cable’s lobbyists spent several years pushing for legislation restricting the development of these new competitors and when Republicans took control of the General Assembly in 2011, they finally succeeded. Today, launching or expanding community broadband networks in North Carolina has been made nearly impossible by the law, modeled after a bill developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

With fiber fever gripping the state, Fibrant has gotten a lot of attention from Charlotte media because it provides the type of service other providers are only talking about. Fibrant offers residents cable television, phone, and broadband and competes directly with Time Warner Cable and AT&T. Although not the cheapest option in town, Fibrant is certainly the fastest and local residents are gradually taking their business to the community alternative.

Charlotte, N.C. is surrounded by community providers like Fibrant in Salisbury and MI-Connection in the Mooresville area.

“A lot faster Internet speeds, a lot clearer phone calls,” said Sidewalk Deli owner Rick Anderson-McCombs, who switched to Fibrant after 15 years with another provider. His mother, Anganetta Dover told WSOC-TV, “I think we save about $30 to $40 a month with Fibrant and the advantages of having the speed is so much better.”

Julianne Goodman cut cable’s cord, dropping Time Warner Cable TV service in favor of Netflix. To support her online streaming habit, she switched to Fibrant, which offers faster Internet speeds than the cable company.

Commercial customers are also switching, predominately away from AT&T in favor of Fibrant.

“Businesses love us because we don’t restrict them on uploads,” one Fibrant worker told WCNC-TV. “So when they want to send files, it’s practically instantaneous.”

Fibrant offers synchronous broadband speeds, which mean the download and upload speeds are the same. Cable broadband technology always favors download speeds over upload, and Time Warner Cable’s fastest upstream speed remains stuck at 5Mbps in North Carolina.

AT&T offers a mix of DSL and U-verse fiber to the neighborhood service in North Carolina. Maximum download speed for most customers is around 24Mbps. AT&T has made a vague commitment to increase those speeds, but customers report difficulty qualifying for upgrades.

Time Warner Cable is a big player in the largest city in North Carolina, evident as soon as you spot the Time Warner Cable Arena on East Trade Street in downtown Charlotte.

Taxpayer dollars are also funneled to the cable company.

Time Warner Cable’s $82 million data center won the company a $2.9 million Job Development Investment Grant. Charlotte’s News & Observer noted the nation’s second largest cable company also received $3 million in state incentives.

When communities like Salisbury approached providers about improving broadband speeds, they were shown the door.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCNC Charlotte Fibrant Already Provides Fiber 3-5-14.mp4[/flv]

WCNC-TV reports that with Google expressing an interest in providing fiber service in Charlotte, Salisbury’s Fibrant has been offering service since 2010. (2:57)

“Our citizens asked for high-speed Internet,” says Doug Paris, Salisbury’s city manager. “We met with the incumbent providers [like Time Warner and AT&T, and that did not fit within their business plans.”

Salisbury and Wilson, among others, elected to build their own networks. The decision to enter the broadband business came under immediate attack from incumbent providers and a range of conservative astroturf and sock puppet political groups often secretly funded by the phone and cable companies.

Rep. Avila, a ban proponent, meets with Marc Trathen, Time Warner Cable’s top lobbyist (right) (Photo: Bob Sepe)

Critics of Fibrant launched an attack website against the venture (it stopped updating in March, 2012), suggesting the fiber venture would bankrupt the city. One brochure even calls Stop the Cap! part of a high-priced consultant cabal of “Judas goats for big fiber” (for the record, Stop the Cap! was not/is not paid a penny to advocate for Fibrant or any other provider).

Opponents also characterize Fibrant as communism in action and have distributed editorial cartoons depicting Fibrant service technicians in Soviet military uniforms guarding Salisbury’s broadband gulag.

In January of this year, city officials were able to report positive news. Fibrant has begun to turn a profit after generating $2,223,678 in the revenue from July through December, 2013. Fibrant lost $4.1 million during the previous fiscal year. That is an improvement over earlier years when the venture borrowed more than $7 million from the city’s water and sewer capital reserve fund, repaying the loans at 1 percent interest. The city believes the $33 million broadband network will break even this year — just four years after launching.

Fibrant is certainly no Time Warner Cable or AT&T, having fewer than 3,000 customers in the Salisbury city limits. But it does have a market share of 21 percent, comparable to what AT&T U-verse has achieved in many of its markets.

Fibrant also has the highest average revenue per customer among broadband providers in the city — $129 a month vs. $121 for Time Warner Cable. Customers spend more for the faster speeds Fibrant offers.

Some residents wonder if Fibrant will be successful if or when AT&T and Google begin offering fiber service. Both companies have made a splash in Charlotte’s newspapers and television news about their fiber plans, which exist only on paper in the form of press releases. Neither provider has targeted Salisbury for upgrades and nobody can predict whether either will ultimately bring fiber service to the city of Charlotte.

Those clamoring for fiber broadband speeds under the state’s anti-community broadband law will have to move to one of a handful of grandfathered communities in North Carolina where forward-thinking leaders actually built the fiber networks private companies are still only talking about.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WSOC Charlotte Charlotte could gain from fiber optic network already in place 4-22-14.flv[/flv]

WSOC-TV in Charlotte reports Salisbury customers are happy with Fibrant service and the competition it provides AT&T and Time Warner Cable. (2:12)

The head of the country’s largest Spanish-language television network Univision said on Monday that Comcast’s proposed purchase of Time Warner Cable could be “bad for Hispanic audiences.”

Univision President Randy Falco told Wall Street analysts that the combined cable company would serve 91 percent of all Latino households and be the dominant distributor of multichannel programming in 19 of the 20 largest Spanish-language television markets.

“We are hoping at the very least there is that scrutiny and potentially much tougher restrictions added to the existing [Comcast-NBCUniversal] consent decree that will protect Comcast competitors such as Univision who are serving minority communities in particular,” said Falco.

Although Falco did not directly oppose the merger, he did express concern that Comcast would not treat independent Spanish language networks like Univision as well as NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo network. Falco noted Comcast has refused to carry Univision’s sports network. Time Warner Cable does.

“Either Comcast doesn’t understand that soccer is a passion point for Hispanics or they don’t support competitors who have competing services,” Falco said. “My fear is that the latter is the case and this type of anti-competitive conduct would continue.”

Falco is among the first media executives to publicly criticize the merger. Critics of the deal say programmers are keeping quiet fearing future retaliation from Comcast.

Time Warner Cable TV subscribers with a set-top box can now access more than two dozen new channels on the company’s TWC TV App, now offering more than 300 channels for in-home streaming.

The newly available channels may vary depending on your local lineup, but generally include a large number of subscription international channels, home shopping, and religion. (Note: ITV Gold is not part of the United Kingdom’s ITV network. It is a network targeting the South Asian diaspora with Bollywood musicals, soap operas, and movies. C1R should probably be listed as Channel One Russia (Первый Канал), so it isn’t confused with C1R.com, an adult video site. Oops.)

1. America’s Auction Net SD
2. BlueHighways TV HD
3. C1R
4. CCTV 4 America (Mandarin)
5. CCTV News English
6. Daystar TV Net (National)
7. Filmy
8. Gem Shopping Network
9. GMA DWLS Radio
10. GMA DZBB Radio
11. GMA Life TV
12. GMA Pinoy TV
13. Infinito
14. ITV Gold
15. Liquidation Channel
16. NASA TV
17. Phoenix North America Satellite TV
18. RAI Italia
19. RLTV
20. Sundance HD
21. TV Asia
22. TV5 Monde
23. TVB1
24. UTV Movies SD
25. YouToo
26. Zee TV

Now you can watch Law & Order reruns in HD on Sundance TV.

The TWC TV App is available for iOS, Android, PC & Mac, Roku, Samsung Smart TV’s, Kindle and the Xbox 360 — you can find out more about it at the TWC apps page.

The only mass interest channel in the list is Sundance HD, although NASA TV is also a welcome addition.

Viewing is free for current cable subscribers, but many of these channels may not be available for viewing outside of the home.

Time Warner Cable reports it has unleashed major broadband speed upgrades for a handful of communities in New York and Los Angeles and is now delivering speeds up to 300Mbps.

After overhauling its network and neighborhood nodes, residential customers in Costa Mesa and West Hollywood, Calif., Staten Island and the Woodside neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., should now be getting faster broadband speeds ranging from 50Mbps for Standard (formerly 15Mbps) to 300Mbps for Extreme (formerly 50Mbps) service.

“These significant speed increases and network enhancements will allow our Internet customers to get the most out of their TWC experience,” said Time Warner Cable CEO Robert D. Marcus. “With this service transformation, our customers can enjoy all the ways they use TWC Internet even better, including streaming video, downloading music and more.”

Time Warner Cable’s senior vice president for corporate development Mike Roudi said Time Warner Cable expects to roll out similar upgrades nationwide over the next two years. But Comcast may have other ideas if it successfully completes its merger with Time Warner Cable by this time next year.

The cable company’s progress in rolling out upgrades is not as fast as their new top broadband speeds. Time Warner only expects to reach 200,000 customers with the new speeds by the end of June. The next areas scheduled for upgrades include:

• California: Covina, Cypress, Hoover, Crenshaw District and Jefferson Park areas of Los Angeles;
• New York: Upper Manhattan and more neighborhoods in Queens and Staten Island.

Time Warner said it expects to complete upgrades in New York and Los Angeles by the end of this year. No timeline was provided to start upgrades in other cities. Affected Time Warner customers will be contacted about replacing their existing DOCSIS 2 modem and getting set-top boxes for the all-digital television conversion that accompanies the upgrade.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/TWC Talks About New Customer Experience in NY LA 4-22-14.mp4[/flv]

Time Warner Cable’s Mike Roudi explains how the cable company is upgrading customers for faster broadband speeds and all-digital television service in this company-produced video. (1:49)