St. Louis - Cable TV and broadband provider Charter Communications (NASD: CHTR) has abandoned plans to deploy a system that would have monitored the Web surfing habits of its customers in a bid to serve them more relevant ads. Charter's plans to implement NebuAd's tracking service drew scrutiny from both consumer privacy advocates and powerful Congressmen on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, who sent a letter to Charter asking the company to delay its plans and provide more information.

New York - The Nielsen Company announced on Wednesday an agreement with cable TV provider Charter Communications, that will give Nielsen access to anonymous digital set-top box data for analytical and potential TV audience measurement purposes. The data on 330,000 Charter subscribers in Los Angeles will be available to Nielsen beginning in the second quarter.