Charter CEO Tom Rutledge will continue to lead the expanded company, while Time Warner Cable CEO Rob Marcus will exit, reportedly with $92 million in severance pay after two and a half years at the helm.
Federal regulators imposed conditions on the deal to boost broadband competition and prevent the newly expanded Charter from trying to shut out competition from online video. Within five years, Charter is required to bring broadband of at least 60Mbps download speeds to an additional 2 million customer locations, of which 1 million must be in competition against at least one other high-speed provider. Other conditions prohibit the combined company from imposing data caps and overage fees on Internet customers and from charging large online content providers for network interconnection. Charter also will not be allowed to enforce clauses in contracts with programmers that prevent the programmers from making video available to online services. The conditions will be imposed for seven years.
Comcast previously attempted to buy Time Warner Cable, but the merger was stopped last year by federal regulators who detailed concerns about potential harm to online video services.
Disclosure: Bright House was owned by the Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica. Advance/Newhouse now owns 13 percent of Charter as a result of the merger.