Charter Asks Court to Block Former Exec from Metronet Job

The cable giant said T-Mobile and Metronet would have access to its convergence trade secrets.

Charter Asks Court to Block Former Exec from Metronet Job
Photo of Charter Communications headquarters in Stamford, Conn.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2025 – Charter Communications is asking federal judges to block a former executive from working his new job at fiber provider Metronet.

The company told the Delaware District Court that Preshanth Myla, Charter’s former vice president of IT device activation, was violating stock option agreements and a Connecticut trade secrets law by working as Metronet’s chief information officer. T-Mobile is in the process of acquiring Metronet via a joint venture with an investment firm.

Myla left Charter in October 2024 and joined Metronet in December.

“Myla’s move will give Metronet and T-Mobile immediate, unfair competitive advantages as Myla leverages his expertise (i.e., Charter’s trade secrets) in optimizing the interoperability of traditional internet services with cellular services to compete with Charter,” the company wrote in an emergency motion.

Charter is effectively worried T-Mobile will get access to its trade secrets around convergence, the popular industry practice of offering mobile and fixed broadband together in an effort to get customers to stick around longer. Charter is a cable giant with more than 30 million broadband subscribers and operates a mobile service through a deal with Verizon, which the company announced Tuesday just reached 10 million subscribers.

On the company’s earnings call last week, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said the company sees “much lower churn” among converged customers, with CFO Jessica Fischer adding the company saw better revenue from those customers as well.

T-Mobile’s pending acquisition of Metronet and another regional fiber provider, Lumos, is in part a bid to get in on convergence, as Charter sees it. The partnership with Metronet will “undoubtedly leverage Myla's expertise in optimizing the interoperability of traditional internet services with mobile offerings,” Charter argued.

T-Mobile ended 2024 with more than 6.4 million broadband subscribers, largely offered with excess capacity on its 5G network for now, and more than 122 million mobile customers.

Charter argued Myla was barred by more than 15 stock option agreements from working for a competitor for at least a year. Myla, for his part, sought to have the case dismissed, or at least transferred. He argued that the agreements were so overbroad they violated state law in Colorado, where he lives and worked for Charter, and thus can’t be enforced. 

The company had filed a complaint seeking to keep Myla out of his new job earlier in January, but followed up on Jan. 24 with an emergency motion to immediately block Myla from working for Metronet after he fought the case.

Myla will have to file a response to Charter’s emergency motion by Feb. 7, and Charter will have to respond to Myla’s motion to dismiss by the same day. 

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