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Wideband in the centre of the Charter-Time Warner Cable Deal

Charter Communications on Tuesday heralded a deal couple to purchase Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for a combined $67.1 billion, focusing on the wire industry's future: broad band. In fact, they mentioned the option of establishing a domestic TV broadcasting stream without a conventional CATV connection.

"It' not just the small monitors or the big monitors in the home, it' s the portable monitors and more," said Thomas M. Rutledge, Charter CEO, in an interviewer. The Charter's commitments underlined the characteristics it hoped would reach both regulatory authorities and consumers: this ISP is now the most important element of a bundled packet as the final gate to information and enjoyment.

The new weight of this charter - the acquisition would approximately quadruple Comcast' client franchise to around 24 million from 27 million - will give it more resource and incentive to innovate and deliver competitively. Charter seemed in his commentary to be trying to make a difference between his offer and Comcast's unsuccessful acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

"It' s an entirely different business, and we think it's quite possible to get approved," Mr. Rutledge said. Suggested agreements - which would make up the country's second biggest wire company after Comcast - are the latest in a flood of acquisitions in the wire industry as businesses fight to keep up with the way Americans view and afford TV.

AT&T's $48. 5 billion transaction for DirectTV, a global TV channel, awaits government clearance. Earlier this month, Altice, the leading telecommunication services group in Europe, purchased a majority shareholding in Suddenlink, a local telecoms network. A number of industry experts anticipate even more horizontal dealing, particularly among TV groups that could be consolidated to offset the increasing impact of cables and satellites on programme costing.

As part of the transaction Charter provided $195 to Time Warner Cable shareholders. Time Warner Cable is valued at $78. 7 billion, about 14 per cent higher than its Friday close. Charters is gonna pay $10.4 billion for Bright House. According to Charter, it expects to achieve $800 million in total costs per year through the combination.

Upon completion of the transaction, the merged entity's service businesses will be divested under the Spectrum name. There was consensus among industry analysts as to the differences in regulator worries, albeit significant, from those addressed by Comcast's offer for Time Warner Cable. In the past year, Comcast announced its transaction as a fusion between two cables that do not vie for sales to consumers in any single market.

However, as our videosubscriptions decelerated and a host of new stream opportunities appeared, it became clear that broad band was the much more important part of the transaction. Feds and consumers' groups moved their attention to controlling Comcast would have won over much of the country's high-speed Internet access marked, and thus the ability to damage new on-line competitor-videos.

Charter takeovers would give her full command of less than 30 per cent of the country's high-speed web access markets, up from 57 per cent at Comcast. The Comcast also own the NBC Universal entertainments group, which presented some possible clashes, with criticism that Comcast might prefer its own contents; this is not a problem for Charter.

Mr Rutledge said that the merged firms would not discourage rival competitors such as Netflix from competing with them. It added that the Charter had no plan to "block, reduce or prioritise web traffic". "Netflix, a vociferous adversary of the comcast acquisition, refused to post a Tuesday review of the charter transaction.

Both Charter and Time Warner Cable are at the bottom of consumer survey scores, and some doubted whether the merged entity would deliver on its promise to enhance services. Former Democrat Michael Copps of the Federal Communications Commission and Common Cause PR Group consultant, Michael Copps, said the administration should bring "a good measure of scepticism" to executives' innovation pledges.

This multi-billion dollars offering is also a highlight for the Charter and its principal sponsor, 74-year-old multi-billion aire mediasmogul John C. Malone, who is committed to consolidating the business and joining Mr. Rutledge on a quest to make the Charter the country's second biggest wire corporation from a small corporation founded in St. Louis in 1993.

Over the last two years Charter has attempted to purchase Time Warner cable to capture shares of the rapidly consolidated US residential wire and wireless markets. But last year the enemy take-over by Comcast seemed to have been foiled. Last month's failure of the Comcast acquisition provided Charter with a new window of opportunity to realise its great ambition.

Nearly immediately after Comcast announced that it was going off its Times Warner cable deals, banks that represent the two firms began speaking on . Although the rate label was much higher, this year' deals were kind. Under the terms of the transaction, which is anticipated to be completed by the end of the year, the charter states that Timewarner Cable stockholders will own up to 44% of the merged company.

Investor in Advance/Newhouse, the ultimate holding of Bright House Networks, will own approximately 14 per cent, and Liberty Broadband, part of Mr Malone's telecoms group, will own 20 per cent. In order to support the financing of the transaction, Charter said it would be selling $5 billion in shares to Liberty Broadband.

Brian L. Roberts, CEO of Comcast, issued a declaration congratulating his rival. "He said this whole thing makes all the difference in the world."