Public Interest Advocates Ask CPUC to Dismiss Comcast/TWC
An administrative ruling on the California Public Utilities Commission's revised timeline for review of Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable was delayed after a coalition of state public interest advocates filed a motion for the CPUC to dismiss its review of Comcast/TWC and associated deals. CPUC Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer had been expected to rule Monday (see 1411210043) on a petition by public interest advocates to extend the timeline for CPUC review of Comcast/TWC, but could rule on the timeline extension and the motion to dismiss by the end of the week, Greenlining Institute Legal Counsel Paul Goodman said in an interview. Bemesderfer’s delayed ruling on the timeline isn’t necessarily connected to the motion to dismiss, CPUC Office of Ratepayer Advocates (ORA) Senior Attorney Lindsay Brown said. A Comcast spokeswoman declined to comment on the motion to dismiss.
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Greenlining, ORA and The Utility Reform Network jointly filed the motion to push Comcast, TWC and other companies involved in the deals to expand their case for CPUC approval to better reflect the scope of the commission’s review, Brown told us. Comcast and the other companies “have the burden of proving their case" and they "absolutely haven’t done that yet,” she said. Greenlining and others believe Comcast hasn’t sufficiently explained how Comcast/TWC would affect broadband and other services in California. The CPUC said in August that its Comcast/TWC review would examine the deal's public interest aspects and the implications for broadband in the state (see 1408180024). Comcast and associated companies said in a filing Friday that public interest advocates’ claims that the companies haven’t fully addressed the scope of CPUC review is a “red herring” and that they have tried to satisfy advocates’ document requests.
Comcast’s failure to address the California-specific broadband implications of Comcast/TWC “puts us at a real disadvantage” in filing opening briefs on the deal, because public interest advocates will only be able to speculate about what Comcast will say about that issue, Goodman said. “If they can’t make that case on paper, we’re entitled to ask the commission to dismiss the application.” The CPUC could choose to dismiss the Comcast/TWC application with or without prejudice, or reject the advocates’ motion, Goodman said. Comcast would be able to resubmit its application only if the CPUC dismissed the current application without prejudice, he said.
Greenlining isn’t “automatically anti-merger,” but believes it’s now necessary to get Comcast to better address the broadband issue by forcing the company to either file a revised application or submit a new application that better addresses the issue, Goodman said. Media Alliance Executive Director Tracy Rosenberg told us she believes Greenlining, ORA and TURN are filing the motion to dismiss to be “assertive” about the struggle over the scope of the review rather than seeking an outright dismissal of the application. “As an opponent of the merger, I wouldn’t object if there’s a summary judgment for dismissal, but I don’t think that’s a particularly likely outcome,” she said.
ORA separately filed a motion for the CPUC to take official notice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s stay Friday of the FCC’s planned release of content providers’ video programming confidential information to outside counsel as part of its own Comcast/TWC review (see 1411210042). The VPCI documents are also seen as important to the CPUC Comcast/TWC review, and public interest advocates are arguing that the CPUC should delay the filing deadlines in its review until the VPCI documents are released. Comcast and associated companies urged the CPUC to proceed with its current review timeline, in which opening briefs are due Monday, arguing that access issues-related VPCI documents are irrelevant to the CPUC’s review.
Goodman and Rosenberg said their organizations are continuing to plan to file opening briefs on Comcast/TWC by Monday's deadline if Bemesderfer doesn’t extend the CPUC’s timeline. Without the VPCI documents, “we’re going to lose that opportunity to address that data,” Goodman said.