Dish Network argued that its upcoming over-the-top (OTT) streaming...

service was offered unimpeded in the TWC-dominated markets of New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas,” it said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1qizrFI). If Comcast/TWC controls half or more of relevant high-speed broadband lines nationally, “Dish’s ability to offer a mainstream OTT service to the audience most likely to adopt that product at the outset could be greatly, perhaps fatally, curtailed,” it said. The combined companies also will be able to extract lower prices from programmers, which will force programmers to extract even higher rates from smaller pay-TV providers “to compensate the programmers for lost revenue,” it said. Dish also argued that Comcast/TWC will have the incentive and ability to restrict programmers’ ability to grant digital rights to competing pay-TV and OTT video providers. Dish continues to get its facts wrong, a Comcast spokeswoman said. After the proposed transaction, Comcast “will only make up about 35 percent of broadband subscribers nationwide -- and that doesn’t even include wireless broadband which will provide even more competition in the future,” she said. Comcast’s transaction with NBCUniversal has provisions for OTT providers “to access the NBCUniversal content,” she said. Neither Comcast nor NBCUniversal has the ability to control other programmer decisions with regard to OTT services, she said.