More than three months after the Big Ten Network and Comcast Corp., the nation’s biggest cable company, were reported to have agreed on the framework of a deal, the deal is essentially completed, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday.
“For all intents and purposes, it’s done,” one source close to the negotiations said Sunday, the Tribune reported Monday. Sources expect the deal will be completed and unveiled this week, the paper said.
Such a deal is significant here because a BTN-Comcast deal is seen as providing a potential framework for a deal between BTN and Charter Communications and Time Warner, Wisconsin’s two major cable providers.
“It’s Comcast first, Time Warner a distant second, and Charter third,” UW-Madison professor of telecommunications Barry Orton said of the size and pecking order of major cable companies serving states in the Big Ten Conference.