Charter, Time Warner Cable & Bright House Complete Transactions

STAMFORD: Charter Communications has officially closed its $55 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and $10.4 billion buyout of Bright House Networks, with the combined outfit servicing a total of 23.9 million customers in 41 states.

The combination creates the second-largest cable provider in the U.S., behind Comcast. The single entity will simply be known as Charter, and will be led by Tom Rutledge as chairman of the board, president and CEO.

“I want to thank the management teams and all of the employees at Charter, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks for their hard work over these past 12 months,” said Rutledge. “Despite much distraction, they kept their focus on the customer, and as a result, today we join together three companies, each operating with tremendous momentum. 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, and the product improvements and consumer-friendly policies that come with it. Charter’s objective is to provide high-quality products at great prices, and back it up with excellent customer service, and we intend to continually improve the way we do business in order to be the very best at what we do.”