I was talking to my grandmother, who lives in a managed MDU near Livonia, MI that currently has a bulk deal with Charter (ex-BHN) for their TV in unit, internet in common areas, and discounted Triple Play packages. Their bulk contract expires in the next month or two (she said it's independent of the Charter acquisition, and wasn't a buyout trigger clause), and they somehow put it out to bid, and Comcast got the contract. Technically speaking, it isn't rocket science, as they are, at worst, low-double digit kilofeet from Comcast's plant in a neighboring town.
That being said, this is just weird. I have never heard of Comcast, Charter, Cox, or Altice overbuilding each other. Now, strictly speaking, this isn't actually an overbuild, as I don't think they are making residential cable TV available to anyone else in Charter's territory, and the coax will stay on-property with just a fiber run back to Comcast's system up the road, but it still seems strange for an MDU deal to encroach on another cable company's territory.
Is this a normal occurrence, or is this something out of the ordinary? Is this just business as usual, is Comcast opportunistically taking advantage of post-merger discombobulation to grab an easy and cheap 1,000 subs through a bulk deal, where they don't have to build much plant, or is there something more to this between the two companies?
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