Charter

Charter Communications is the second-largest cable and broadband operator in the United States, serving residential and business customers under the Spectrum brand across 41 states with roughly 32 million total customer relationships. The company generates revenue primarily from broadband subscriptions, video bundles, and advertising, the last increasingly reliant on first-party household-level data collected across its managed network.

Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, Charter grew through a series of acquisitions, most significantly the roughly $78bn merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016, which roughly trebled its footprint. The resulting Spectrum brand unified three previously separate cable systems under a single national identity.

Charter's address-level household data is its most defensible long-term asset as cord-cutting accelerates and broadband becomes the primary revenue driver, and it is a standing reference point whenever streaming platforms or broadcasters weigh building versus buying connected-television data at scale.