Charter Wants to Expand Its Video Cloud to Bright House

Charter Communications was eager Tuesday to talk about the benefits of scale that it expects to achieve via its proposed $10.4 billion acquisition of Bright House Networks, and a good piece of that will include the MSO’s next-gen video platform and its budding wireless aspirations.

During Tuesday’s call with reporters and analysts, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said its proposed acquisition of Bright House and transactions tied to the pending Comcast/Time Warner Cable will give Charter an opportunity to extend the reach of its new cloud-based user interface and its strategy involving the “Worldbox,” a new class of device that can run on Arris- and Cisco Systems-based cable systems thanks to its use of a new downloadable security system (Cisco and Humax are the known suppliers of Charter’s Worldbox). Charter is also using technology from ActiveVideo and Zodiac Interactive to offer the new UI across its box base, including older QAM-locked set-tops that are two-way, but don’t speak IP.

“So our strategy from a guide and new set-top box perspective...integrates with Bright House, Time Warner and with Comcast assets pretty universally,” Rutledge said, noting later that “a scaled company investing in a centralized cloud based UI and service architecture can [create] better products than our competitors have.”

For the full story go to Multichannel.com.