Charter Plus Time Warner Would Have Up to 22.6% High Speed Access Share

Some believe a Charter Communications bid to acquire Time Warner Cable would not raise regulatory objections, certainly not the concerns that made the Comcast bid for Time Warner Cable a problem.

That seems to be the case. Most observers would agree Comcast’s market share in high speed access was the deal killer. Comcast would have had about 57 percent share of high speed access.

A Charter-owned Time Warner Cable, plus Bright House Networks, would have substantial share, but well below the 30-percent level that traditionally has triggered antitrust concerns.

The combined firm might have up to 20 million high speed access customers. If there are 88,5 million U.S high speed access customers, then Charter would have 22.6 percent share.

Charter would have about 17.8 million video subscribers, trailing Comcast with up to 22.3 million. The new number three provider would be Cablevision Systems Corp., at 2.6 million video subscribers.

AT&T has about 16 million Internet access customers. Verizon has 9.2 million.

Comcast and Charter would represent perhaps 40 million customers, while AT&T and Verizon have about 25 million.

The perhaps surprising result would be that In the fixed network Internet access segment, Comcast would be number one, Charter number two, AT&T third.

Verizon would rank fourth. CenturyLink would rank fifth, Cablevision Systems sixth and Frontier Communications seventh.

In the top five spots, cable TV companies would be number one and two providers, with even the largest U.S. telcos ranking third, fourth and fifth.