Mike Robertson, 55, commands Bright House Networks from St. Petersburg's Carillon office park like a cable TV pro with some 22 years under his belt in the Tampa Bay market — braced for whatever his bigger foe throws at him.

Michelle Robinson, 40 and named Verizon's southeast region president last summer, is on a mission to make bigger, richer Verizon the single go-to provider of all network services tied to phones, televisions and PCs for Tampa Bay area households and businesses. That feisty, entrenched Bright House? Bring it on, she says.

Both companies claim lots of Tampa Bay customers but are not specific. (Bright House has more than a million; Verizon's more recent FiOS TV numbers are between 225,000 and 275,000.)


Telecom behemoths fight for Tampa Bay's attention, money - St. Petersburg Times