The FTC has given their approval for Charter's acquisition of Cablevision's "Optimum West" territories for $1.625 billion in cash. The 300,000 customers in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and Utah have only just seen the paint dry on their last sale, from Bresnan Communications to Cablevision for $1.37 billion just two years ago. Charter beat back companies like Suddenlink and Time Warner Cable who were also interested. "Optimum West is an ideal fit for Charter and we anticipate an efficient integration process," said Charter CEO Tom Rutledge. Rumors meanwhile have intensified that Cablevision may finally be sold, with Time Warner Cable the most likely suitor.

New Charter CEO Tom Rutledge this week informed investors that Charter Communications was "a mess" when he took over the company one year ago. "There is no other way to describe it," said the CEO, who added that the company was a "diamond in the rough" and that "we spent the last year trying to straighten it out." Rutledge's moves since taking the new position have drawn some hard lines, such as simplifying the company's usage tiers to just 30 and 100 Mbps and eliminating support for customer-owned modems entirely. Rutledge is also responsible for shutting down the company's entire "UMatter2Charter" social and online support department despite consistently ranking last industry-wide in customer service and support. Those changes have helped the balance sheet, but at the cost of further eroding an already struggling consumer brand perception.

After several significant delays, the entertainment industry and most of the nation's largest ISPs are set to launch their "six strikes" graduated response anti-piracy efforts starting today. Sources familiar with the plan timetable have told both Daily Dot and Torrent Freak that six strikes starts today, and a new Center for Copyright Information website run by the entertainment industry appears to have been freshly launched for the occasion (see new video, below).

Charter's quarterly earnings released this morning show the cable operator lost $40 million on the quarter, an improvement from the $67 million lost this time last year. Charter added 54,000 broadband and 34,000 voice customers on the quarter, but lost 36,000 video subscribers. "Our fourth-quarter results provide early evidence that our strategic changes are working as planned," Chief Executive Tom Rutledge said. "We are providing a more competitive product and service, and as a result, customer relationships are growing and underlying subscription revenue is accelerating." Charter's "strategic changes" this quarter included shutting down their entire "UMatter2Charter" social and online support department despite consistently ranking last industry-wide in customer service and support.

Back in 2011 the FCC began collecting real-world user broadband data from customized routers, then issuing reports on which ISPs were failing to deliver advertised speeds. It's one of the few FCC policies in recent years that has truly paid dividends for consumers.

On the heels of killing off their social media support team and eliminating support for customer-owned modems, Charter isn't making any friends in our forums via a suite of new rate hikes. Charter has been notifiying users since January that they can expect broadband service hikes ranging from $2 to $5, depending on the service.

ISPs which in the past had historically improved in Netflix performance because of faster speeds, are now finding themselves falling in Netflix's new monthly streaming ISP rankings because they're not signing up for Netflix's CDN network. As noted recently, Netflix stated they'd start offering users "Super HD" and 3D streams -- if their ISP signed up for Netflix's new Open Connect Content Delivery Network.

Charter has announced that the company will be buying Cablevision's "Optimum West" territories for $1.625 billion in cash. The 300,000 customers in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and Utah have only just seen the paint dry on their last sale, from Bresnan Communications to Cablevision for $1.37 billion just two years ago. Charter beat back companies like Suddenlink and Time Warner Cable who were also interested. "Optimum West is an ideal fit for Charter and we anticipate an efficient integration process," said Charter CEO Tom Rutledge.

It has been about half a decade now that I've been pointing out that most of the meters used by ISPs to track and bill consumers for usage aren't accurate. Customers of Canadian cable operator Cogeco have long complained the company's meter is inaccurate when users can load it at all, and every so often the meter simply goes mad -- like last Spring when the meter was horribly confused by leap year.

Charter Communications stock has surged this week on Wall Street rumors that the company is working on some kind of significant merger or acquisition. Employees state that the company has frozen all budgets, and I've confirmed with some Charter folks that there's all-hands-on-deck manager conferences scheduled for this week.

Charter is informing customers that a dubious fee will be getting slightly more dubious during 2013. As it stands, Charter automatically charges users a $1.99 "Service Computerized Fee" should customers make any changes to their service, be it to change programming packages, or downgrade/upgrade your broadband speeds.

While Charter Communications guts their entire social networking presence to save a buck, Cablevision is expanding further into social networking support. As noted recently, new Charter management decided it would be a good idea to gut their entire UMatter2Charter support team, which provided users with a way to break through traditional support gridlock via Twitter, Facebook, and even here in our direct forums.

Cablevision appears to be doing the exact opposite, Fierce Cable directing our attention to the fact that Cablevision is hunting for numerous new executives to tackle social media support:As noted previously, such efforts aren't that expensive, but provide a company with a very human face while helping customers break through what can often be insurmountable red tape. Unless you're looking to save a buck and don't care that, as is the case with Charter, numerous customer satisfaction studies consistently rank you in last place among all carriers.

Netflix has once again ranked the best ISPs for streaming content. According to this Netflix blog post, the company's rankings come from 30 million members viewing over 1 billion hours of Netflix each month.

Update: Charter has confirmed they're not only killing off all online social media help, but they're pulling their technicians from our private, direct forum, where countless Broadband Reports readers have gotten additional private assistance above and beyond Charter's traditional (and traditionally very poorly ranked) tech support. A source tells Broadband Reports that Charter will be doing away with the company's entire social media department (offering Twitter, Facebook and online forum support) as part of broader efforts to cut costs.

Yesterday we exclusively reported that Charter Communications was quietly gutting all of their social media support operations, informing those employees that they could either take a job with phone support, or leave the company entirely. It's an unfortunate move for Charter customers, given that like many ISPs, the use of Twitter to directly correspond with frustrated customer helped users break through bureaucratic gridlock, while giving a human face to the company.

With the entertainment industry's "six strikes" anti-piracy plan very close to launch, some ISPs are finally willing to talk a little about the new steps they'll be taking to thwart pirates on their networks starting later this month. CNET's Declan McCullagh moderated a panel discussion on the new six strikes initiative this week, where ISPs and the RIAA and MPAA tried to downplay concerns about the program.

Charter has shown interest in acquiring Cablevision's networks in the west, and Cablevision has shown interest in listening to offers. Light Reading (via Stop the Cap) notes that confirmation of a possible deal was made by CEO Jim Dolan during Cablevision's recent earnings conference call. "While it has not been our intention to divest this valuable asset, based on the approaches that we have received, we've decided to explore a potential transaction." You may recall that Cablevision acquired those networks by Buying Bresnan Communications back in 2010. The networks in question currently serve around 320,000 subscribers in scattered portions of Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.

An insider at Charter Communications tells Broadband Reports that the company will soon start charging a $200 "activation fee" for the company's 100 Mbps tier. The insider notes that the fee will be imposed starting on October 16 for the tier, and will take effect in all Charter markets.

PC Magazine has again compiled their list of the nation's fastest ISPs, and Verizon FiOS again takes top honors. The test used to face serious criticism from our users for its testing methodology, and now bases most of the results on data provided by Ookla (Speedtest.net).

Several insiders have informed us, and at least one tech has suggested as much in our forums, that Charter Communications is working on creating a 300 Mbps service tier. There's no word on pricing yet, but the company's goal is to keep pace on the marketing front after both Comcast and Verizon FiOS have announced 300 Mbps tiers in recent weeks. Verizon's 300 Mbps tier offers 65 Mbps upstream and clocks in at $205 a month. Comcast's 305 Mbps down, 75 Mbps up tier was recently announced at $300, but as we recently exclusively reported looks to be getting a significant price cut to $119 a month (bundled). Despite numerous flirtations with hard caps and overages, Charter still only enforces their caps in high-volume markets.