Comcast will buy Time Warner Cable for $44.2B tomorrow [updated]

Update: Comcast and Time Warner Cable have since reached a deal for a merger.

Top U.S. cable company Comcast will announce tomorrow its plan to acquire the next-largest cable company in the country, according to multiple reports.

CNBC’s David Faber put the deal size at $159 per share, or $44.2 billion, in a tweet tonight. Faber did not name his sources.

That would be close to the $160 per share figure that Rob Marcus, Time Warner Cable’s president, was hoping for.

Representatives of Time Warner Cable and Comcast have not responded to VentureBeat’s requests for comment.

If the deal goes through, it could have major implications for staffers at both companies — jobs could be cut to avoid duplication of effort — and, of course, tens of millions of viewers.

Comcast had 21.6 million video customers, 20.3 million Internet customers, and 10.5 million voice customers as of Sept. 30, 2013. As of that same date, Time Warner Cable had 11.4 million residential video customers, 11.1 million residential Internet subscribers, and 4.8 million residential voice subscribers, with business customers in each of those areas numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Time Warner Cable stock closed at $135.31 per share today, and the deal would give stockholders 18 percent more than that, as Barron’s pointed out.

CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter wrote in a tweet that the acquisition would go down for $158.82 per share.

It’s unclear if a Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal would receive regulatory approval. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) might not be so hot on a deal that would bring together such big public-facing service providers. The merger between AT&T and T-Mobile fell apart after the FCC objected. Now regulators are apparently resisting a Sprint acquisition of T-Mobile.