Charter Communications has completed its purchase of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, a mammoth merger that sweeps together 25 million customers in 41 states and reorders the landscape for high-speed Internet and pay-TV service.
Charter, based in Stamford, Conn., intends to phase out the Time Warner Cable and Bright House names, and instead market its products and services under the Spectrum brand.
"Current Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable customers won't see many changes right away, though in the coming months they will begin to hear more from us about the Spectrum brand," Charter Chief Executive Tom Rutledge said in a statement Wednesday morning.
Charter becomes the largest pay-TV provider in Southern California with more than 2 million customer homes.
The overall value of the cash and stock deal reached about $71 billion -- more than when the transaction was first announced in May 2015 because the value of Time Warner Cable and Bright House shares increased during the past 12 months.
Charter now is the nation's second-largest broadband Internet provider, behind Comcast, and the third-largest pay-TV distributor behind AT&T and Comcast. Charter clinched the deal to buy Time Warner Cable a year ago, after Comcast's bid for Time Warner Cable ran into a regulatory buzzsaw. Charter had been eyeing the Time Warner Cable assets long before that, and Wednesday's deal close marks the end of a more than two-year dance.
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