A Look at Charter Communications
About the Company
Charter Communications® is the fourth largest cable provider in the United States. Headquartered in Town and Country, MO, Charter Communications provides cable television, internet and phone services to customers in 27 states.
Started in 1993, Charter Communications has grown to a company with more than 16,000 employees and provides services to more than five million homes and businesses. Their Charter Bundle® service allows customers to bundle two or three of their services together. Charter is the 10th largest provider of landline phone service in the country.
Charter Communications includes many of the now-standard features of other large cable providers including optional HD programming, digital video recorders and premium channels.
Services
Cable TV
Almost all of Charter Communications cable plans come in bundles, meaning those that want just cable might end up paying more. They offer featured, three service, two service and build-your-own-bundle options.
A higher-end featured package includes cable with more than 6,000 available On-Demand movies and shows, hundreds of HD channels, high-speed Internet with speeds up to 8 Mbps, access to ESPN3.com, unlimited long distance calling to the U.S., Canada, or Puerto Rico, and voicemail services. The other end of the spectrum has a bare-bones deal that includes TV Basic, which offers standard definition programming and local channels and Internet Express.
There are also additional services to add, like sports channels and premium movie channels, HD DVR upgrades, and more. Their bundling system has a large number of options, which makes it easy to piece together a desirable package, but the combinations do have limitations, like the inability to select less than two services.
Internet
Since everything is bundled at Charter Communications it’s likely that most customers will end up with Internet or phone service with their cable. The Internet services come in five varieties: Lite, Express, Plus, Max and Ultra60. Lite is the cheapest and slowest at speeds up to 1Mbps while Ultra60 is the priciest and fastest with speeds up to 60Mbps.
Phone
Charter Communications has a feature-rich phone service that includes premium features like voicemail, call waiting, caller ID, call forwarding and more on some of their base packages. Higher-end packages include even more feature and long distance calling options.
Availability
Charter Communications provides services to 27 states including Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Texas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts and others.