Charter CEO: The new bundle is broadband and mobile

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge remains a believer in the bundle — just with different parts. Rutledge said the vision behind Charter’s 2016 acquisition of Time Warner and Bright House Networks was that “we could put great products together, and packaged in a way that created value." But instead of traditional linear cable TV, Charter sees mobile — based on resold Verizon capacity augmented with the company’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots, and eventually its own licensed CBRS 5G spectrum—as the new counterpart to its core cable broadband service. “We have an opportunity to package that with great broadband,” he said, and “actually save customers money at the household level.” Mobile remains the smallest part of Charter’s residential business; at the end of 2021, it counted 28.1 million Spectrum broadband customers, 15.2 million Spectrum Video customers, 8.6 million Spectrum voice customers and 3.4 million Spectrum Mobile customers. But Rutledge emphasized mobile’s potential upside, noting that its cable service footprint encompasses some 120 million people who subscribe to one wireless service or another: “120 million is still 117 million more than we have.”