Cable License Transfer Leaves Some Groton Cable Subscribers With New Provider

Charter Communications - Groton's first cable provider - will likely be sold to Comcast in a complex transaction paving the way for a merger between Comcast and Time Warner cable, provided the merger is approved by federal and state officials. When completed, this merger would leave approximately one third of Groton's cable subscriber base with Comcast as their new cable provider.

Although the Charter subscriber base in Groton has declined to roughly one third of cable customers in town, statewide Comcast is by far the dominant player in the Cable television market. As of the end of 2013, Comcast had approximately 1.5 million cable customers in Massachusetts while Verizon had about 400,000 customers, leaving Time Warner with only 43,000. Before the merger, Charter had about 180,000 cable customers in the state.

Local Cable Access Director Bob Colman said Comcast would assume Charter's existing license with the town and that he expected little if any change in the short term. He said Groton Cable Access would soon have the capability to broadcast in HD, and is hopeful that both Verizon and Comcast would allocate new HD channels to Groton Cable Access for broadcasting in the higher resolution format.

The merger raises concerns about the impact on cost and service, but Comcast spokesman Timothy Murmane said there would be no impact "whatsoever" on prices, though new services could be offered at correspondingly higher prices. Competition based on superior service should not be anticipated as neither company has a stellar customer service record. According to Murmane, all Charter assets in Massachusetts would transfer to Comcast, but Charter would continue to operate the system until the Comcast/Time Warner deal is completed.

Another concern is Charter subscriber email addresses under the 'charter.net' domain. Murmane said it was too early to know when and how email addresses would be transferred, but that ample time and warning would be given for an orderly transfer of email accounts to Comcast.

As part of the deal, Comcast was forced to divest itself of almost 4 million subscribers so that its total number of subscribers would be less than thirty percent of the total national cable television subscriber base, in order to satisfy federal regulators. Charter agreed to take on 1.4 million of Time Warner's cable subscribers while Charter and Comcast agreed to exchange another 1.5 million customers with each other, which consolidated geographically in the South and West and Comcast gaining customers in Massachusetts and other parts of the northeast.

Cities and towns have 120 days to act on transfer applications and can take into account the new operator's management and technical expertise and financial capability. In many ways this merger makes geographic sense as Comcast already provides cable service to a large number of Massachusetts communities.