What customers should know?
• Appearance of bills and costs will not change immediately.
• Technicians and service vehicle will still have Time Warner Cable logo in next year.
• Customers should use same Time Warner Cable phone numbers for questions or complaints.
• Charter will offer Spectrum service to customers once all-digital service is in place.
• Charter paid about $60 billion for Time Warner Cable.
Charter Communications on Wednesday completed its purchase of Time Warner Cable, a merger that will give the company a stronghold in Ohio, where Time Warner Cable has 2.13 million customers, including 630,000 in southwest Ohio.
Charter intends to phase out the Time Warner Cable name, and instead market its products and services under the Spectrum brand. The company eventually will switch its billing system and make other changes, but those rollouts are expected to take more than a year, a Charter spokesman said.
“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.
Time Warner Cable has long been criticized for its service. The company has been ranked among the lowest for customer satisfaction among cable companies, and in 2015 it had the lowest customer service rating out of all the companies in the U.S., according to Consumer Reports research.
University of Dayton marketing professor Randy Sparks sees potential in the buyout.
“They are going to have to straighten up those service messes that they have,” Sparks said. “Clearly, there’s a lot of things they are not doing right. They don’t have a lot of consumer trust in them right now and so time will tell how they respond.”
For its part, Charter says it plans to hire 20,000 U.S.-based customer service reps to replace Time Warner’s overseas operations.
Charter plans to convert all Time Warner Cable markets to digital, a process that could take up to 18 months. Once a digital conversion is complete, Charter will introduce its products into that market, said Justin Venech, a Charter spokesman. Customers in the Dayton and Cincinnati markets began changing to an all-digital format earlier this year.
In the Time Warner Cable markets it takes over, Charter plans to grow local workforces, Venech said.
“We’ve been growing our company for the past four years, adding 7,000 employees,” he said. “With the acquisition, we now have more than 90,000 employees.”
Charter 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.
Charter also acquired Bright House, which serves more than 2 million customers. The company paid about $11.4 billion for Bright House.
Charter ended up paying about $60 billion for Time Warner Cable. It also assumes $21 billion in Time Warner Cable debt. Time Warner had more than 14 million customers.
Many Time Warner Cable executives and technicians will remain with the company, Charter officials have said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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