Charter is terrified that T-Mobile is stealing its convergence secretsCharter is terrified that T-Mobile is stealing its convergence secrets

Cable company Charter Communications this week filed a lawsuit against its former VP of IT device activation, Prashanth Myla, after Myla took a job at Metronet, the fiber provider recently acquired by T-Mobile and investment firm KKR.

Charter's filing indicates that the company is plenty worried that Myla might give T-Mobile trade secrets about the cable provider's wireless-wireline convergence technology, including Charter's "speed boost" offering.

Introduced in 2022, the speed boost service allows Charter's smartphone customers to get the fastest Wi-Fi speeds possible over the company's wired network, even if they don't subscribe to the speedy services via their in-home Internet service plan. That means a Charter home Internet customer who pays for the company's 200 Mbit/s speed tier might get 1 Gbit/s speeds over their in-home Wi-Fi when they use their Charter smartphone.

Charter's speed boost is one of the cable company's core convergence offerings. Such services have become increasingly important as Charter, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile battle each other for broadband and wireless customers.

"Throughout Myla's employment with Charter, Myla obtained trade secrets, including, but not limited to, financial data, milestones, pricing formulas, pricing strategy and methods, and technologies used in the activation, administration, and integration of fiber and mobile services, from which Charter derives independent economic value from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons (such as Metronet) who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, and are the subject of efforts by Charter that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain secrecy," Charter wrote in its complaint against Myla.

The Metronet equation

According to Charter's filing in a Connecticut federal court, Myla quit Charter in October of 2024, having started at the company as its director of MVNO wireless architecture and integration in 2016. Myla was promoted to Charter's VP of wireless operations in 2021, and to the company's VP of IT device activation position in 2022.

Charter said it learned in December 2024 that Myla had started as Metronet's SVP and CIO, working in Colorado.

Metronet was acquired by a joint venture between T-Mobile and KKR in July 2024.

"Metronet is a direct competitor of Charter which provides competitive fiber optic Internet services to residential and business entities in areas where Charter conducts business in Colorado," Charter wrote. "Metronet has announced a planned joint venture with T-Mobile, a 5G cellular Internet provider, which partnership will undoubtably leverage Myla's expertise in optimizing the interoperability of traditional Internet services with mobile offerings."

Charter alleged that its stock agreement with Myla, inked at the beginning of 2024, prevents him from working for a Charter competitor for at least a year after leaving the cable company.

Officials from T-Mobile and Metronet declined to comment on Charter's lawsuit.

Concern about FWA

Charter's new lawsuit highlights how concerned the company is about T-Mobile's advancements into Charter's core market for broadband. Indeed, Charter shed 110,000 residential broadband customers in the third quarter of last year, compared to a year-ago gain of 63,000.

T-Mobile, meanwhile, added 415,000 FWA (fixed wireless access) customers in the third quarter of last year. T-Mobile ended the period with 6 million total broadband customers.

That's part of a broad industry trend that started in 2023, when US cable operators collectively recorded their first-ever quarterly customer losses amid the rise of FWA offerings from the likes of T-Mobile and Verizon.

But cable started the fight: Through MVNO agreements with mobile operators such as Verizon and T-Mobile, most of the nation's big cable companies now offer wireless services.

From fiber to convergence

Charter's filing may just be the beginning. T-Mobile's investments into fiber operators like Metronet and Lumos – and its pursuit of federal fiber subsidies – are essentially an effort by the mobile network operator to accelerate its momentum into the market for broadband services, which are the core business of cable operators like Charter.

Part of Charter's response to threats like FWA involves mixing customers' wireless and wired services. The latest: Charter's "Life Unlimited" campaign includes guaranteed pricing on new plans for customers who bundle its home broadband connections with Spectrum Mobile wireless service or video services.

AT&T and Verizon have both laid out a similar convergence story. T-Mobile officials, meantime, have hinted at similar interests, but so far the operator has little to show from a technical standpoint.

That may be why T-Mobile executives have downplayed the importance of converged wireless-wireline services. "It's here, it's been here for years," T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert said in December about convergence in general.

But Metronet's poaching of Myla would certainly seem to undermine Sievert's seeming disinterest in convergence.