Charter Communications Cable

Message sent Charter's stocks up 16 per cent in early Friday trade - the sharpest drop since they went bankrupt in 2009 - before they recovered and closed at $263.33, 12 per cent down. Competitors' share also declined, among them Altice USA, the optimal shareholder, which declined by 9.3 per cent. At Comcast, which announced early this week, 96,000 users subscribed it last month, down 4.5 per cent from the anticipated 75,000.

Charters has put part of the debt on a one-time step to shake off tens of thousands of clients who have not paid their invoices - a house cleaning company said it will be completed by the end of the second trimester. Charter's turnover increased by 5 per cent to 10.66 billion US dollars and per capita profits were 70 cent compared to Wall Street's 44 cent guidance.

Charter recorded a small plus of 2,000 cable television customers in the 4th quarter. A year ago, Comcast had gained 42,000 new participants in the previous year's third quarter. 42,000 new participants were added to the total. This strong turnaround underlines the increasing attractiveness of cheaper thin cable harnesses and web-based options such as Netflix. Conventions have led cable operators to participate in this increase by making the'pipes' available to provide these alternative solutions.

However, the third Quarter also brought disastrous signals on the so-called broad band front. 331,000 new private customers were added to the Charter network in the third quarter compared with 428,000 in the same reporting month last year - a decrease of 22 per cent. At Comcast, there was a similar slowdown in new online arrivals and the issue was whether growing bandwidth could compensate for further cable slicing.