Comcast exiting Twin Cities and other markets

Attended a city council meeting on other business and an item about transferring the cable franchise from Comcast to "Midwest Cable" came up.



A report in the agenda was quite interesting.

Quote:

What is happening to the Twin Cities Comcast cable systems? Comcast’s proposed acquisition of TWC will (if approved) result in the total combined number of cable subscribers to be controlled by Comcast to exceed 30 million nationwide. In an effort to reduce that number and make the Transaction more acceptable to federal regulators, Comcast voluntarily agreed to divest itself of 3.9 million cable subscribers nationwide. Part of this proposed divestiture was accomplished with the system swaps between Comcast and Charter that results in Charter acquiring an additional 1.4 million cable subscribers. The remaining 2.5 cable subscribers to be divested by Comcast will be controlled by a new publicly traded entity, Midwest Cable. In Minnesota, Comcast’s only cable subscribers exist in the Twin Cities market (and small portions of western Wisconsin). As a result, the Twin Cities market was selected, along with other markets in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and some southern states, to be included in the divestiture transaction. What this means is that Comcast will be leaving Minnesota and will no longer own the cable systems serving the Twin Cities or the City. Rather, the System will be owned by Midwest Cable. Because Midwest Cable is newly created, it will require third party assistance to address many operating issues such as programming agreements, customer service, billing, technical support and related issues. Charter will be assisting Midwest Cable with many of these issues via a “services agreement” that will be more fully explained in this Report.

Quote:

Customer E-Mail Transition. Post-closing, customers will continue to use their Comcast email account until they migrate to a Midwest Cable email account. Comcast customers will not indefinitely retain their existing “@comcast.net” email address after migrating to the Midwest Cable service, as Comcast owns that domain. However, emails sent to the customer’s former “@comcast.net” email address will be automatically forwarded to the customer’s new Midwest Cable email address for an “ample period of time” that is mutually agreeable to both companies. It is not clear if the email domain will be owned by Charter or Midwest Cable.

What experiences have you had with using TiVo on Charter?