iWorld
Charter Communications, Comcast collaborate to develop streaming platform
Mumbai: Charter Communications, Inc and Comcast Corp on Thursday announced a formation of a 50/50 joint venture to develop and offer a “next-generation” streaming platform.
Comcast will license Flex, its aggregated streaming platform and hardware to the joint venture, contribute the retail business for XClass TVs and also will contribute Xumo, a streaming service it acquired in 2020. Charter will make an initial contribution of $900 million, funded over multiple years.
The service will be available on a variety of branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs, all the top apps, and more choice in the streaming marketplace. The joint venture will offer app developers, streamers, retailers, operators, and hardware manufacturers the opportunity to reach customers in major markets across the country with the platform.
The XClass TVs will be available through national retail partners and potentially direct from Comcast and Charter to provide more customer choice. Xumo will continue to operate as a free global streaming service available through the joint venture’s products and third-party devices. Charter will offer the 4K streaming TV devices and voice remotes beginning in 2023. Comcast will continue to offer the Flex streaming platform as a streaming device and service to its customers.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Charter to bring this platform and its award-winning experience to millions of new customers,” said Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson. “These products are all designed to make search and discovery across live, on-demand and streaming video seamless and incredibly simple for consumers. This partnership uniquely brings together more than a decade of technical innovation, national scale and new opportunities to monetise our combined investment.”
The joint venture’s products will give consumers a state-of-the-art streaming experience to access their favorite apps, based on Comcast’s Flex product, which currently delivers all the most-watched streaming apps in the marketplace. The products will feature hundreds of free content choices through Xumo, a free, ad-supported service currently delivering more than 200 unique streaming channels. Peacock also will be featured on the joint venture’s streaming platform, alongside other popular apps.
The closing of the joint venture is subject to customary closing conditions. This joint venture does not involve the broadband or cable video businesses of either Comcast or Charter which will remain independent.
“Our new venture will bring a full-featured operating platform, new devices, and smart TVs with a robust app store providing a more streamlined and aggregated experience for the customer,” said Charter chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge. “As the video landscape continues to evolve, this venture will increase retail consumer options, compete at scale with established national platforms, and join our existing lineup of options for the Spectrum TV App available on most customer-owned streaming devices.”
iWorld
Meta shutters standalone Messenger website from April 2026
Desktop chats redirect to facebook.com/messages, mobile app remains unaffected for web-independent users.
MUMBAI: Messenger’s web independence is signing off proving that even in the digital age, some chats just can’t escape the Facebook family reunion. Meta has confirmed it will pull the plug on messenger.com as a standalone site starting April 2026, automatically redirecting desktop visitors to facebook.com/messages to keep conversations flowing. The update, posted on the company’s help pages and first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, comes with pop-up notifications on both the Messenger site and app.
The change follows Meta’s earlier retirement of the dedicated Messenger desktop apps for Windows and Mac, which already funnelled users to Facebook’s web interface. For those who’ve deactivated their Facebook accounts but still use Messenger via browser, the move shrinks options further leaving only the mobile app as a lifeline. Chat history stays safe through the secure backup PIN process (with a reset option if forgotten), but web access without a Facebook login is effectively over.
This is the latest twist in Messenger’s long identity crisis. Born as Facebook Chat in 2008, it spun off into a standalone app in 2011 and got fully separated from the main Facebook mobile app in 2014 to boost its own adoption. Yet the pendulum has swung back, since 2023, Facebook has been quietly reintegrating Messenger features into its core platform, slowly dissolving the walls between the two.
Meta frames the shift as a streamlining move consolidating messaging under one roof to simplify infrastructure and user experience. But for the corner of users who preferred Messenger’s lighter, less Facebook-tied web version, it’s a step that feels more like consolidation than convenience.
Whether you’re a die-hard desktop chatter or just someone who logs in occasionally, the message is clear: in Meta’s world, going solo online is becoming a relic. From April 2026, if you’re on a computer, expect the redirect and perhaps a gentle nudge back toward the full Facebook fold.
