Bright House Networks is now Charter Communications.
The final step in Charter Communications' purchase of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable took place Wednesday, May 18, 2016.
Read the official news release.
Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to approve the deal.
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The Federal Communications Commission gave its blessing the week before. This creates the country's second largest cable and broadband company.
Tom Rutledge, Chairman and CEO of Charter Communications, sat down for a question-and-answer session with News 13 on Tuesday morning. Below is a transcript:
Q: Is my bill going to change anytime soon or in the long run?
In the long run, it will. But not anytime soon. You know, our plan is to introduce new pricing and packaging going forward over the next three or four months. That doesn't mean anything is going to change today, and that doesn't mean you have to opt into the new pricing or packaging if you like what you have today. But, we're going to build some new products — compelling products — video services, two-way interactive television on every outlet we serve, we're going to take our data speeds up and we're going to have fully featured voice products that, when combined with data and video, give you a product that costs less and works better than any competitor can provide and our view is that you'll want to do that. But you don't have to do it. So, nothing will change immediately.
Q: Walk me through what you have seen in the changes in the technology that now Charter Communications will introduce all of Central Florida to …
Well, you're right. The technology has changed dramatically, and one of the things we'll do is we'll introduce a new user interface that's state-of-the-art. It looks like the best user interface you've seen on any device, and it will be backwardly compatible with every television that we serve. We'll put a two-way interactive device or application on every outlet we serve. And we'll integrate the video services like Hulu and Netflix into the user interface along with traditional cable services so that there will be a seamless viewing experience. We'll increase the speeds of our data so that you can watch anything and do any kind of gaming on it that you can imagine. And, we'll put that together with compelling voice products and compelling video products such that when bundled, it just is a better deal than you can get anywhere.
Q: One of the very attractive things that was Bright House is now Charter Communications has been the news channels: News 13, InfoMas, Bright House Sports Network, Bay News 9. Any changes on those particular services offered?
Well, you know, I'm really committed to the local news channel business, and when I was at Time Warner more than 14 years ago, I did start at that company as a manager trainee and ended up as president. And if you recall when the news channels were actually built in Central Florida, they were part of Time Warner. And so, I was part of that process and was a big believer in these channels and still am. So, I think that the fact that we can serve the community with high-quality, local news that brings together the community together and differentiates us from all the competitors out there at the local level ... I think that's a really significant attribute of the kind of products that we want to sell. And I'm committed to continuing our journey in journalism at the local level and continuing to invest in the news product.
Bright House Networks, now Charter Communications, is the parent company of News 13/Bay News 9/Bright House Sports Network/InfoMas.