Charter Sees Big Savings, Almost No Commercial Broadband Overlap in Planned Buys of BHN, TWC

response to a request from FCC staff, is highly redacted and gives no details about what specific cost savings Charter expects. Those savings are anticipated to come from programming costs and from "less overhead and management structure than the three companies require separately," as well as from reductions in administrative labor costs and in duplicative facilities, Charter said. It reiterated that the three companies have almost no overlapping customer base. Among their commercial customers, fewer than 1,000 customers are in census blocks where at least two of the three companies operate commercial broadband service -- meaning 0.09 percent of their roughly 1.1 million commercial broadband customers, Charter said. The company previously argued before the FCC that the residential broadband overlap among the three is also miniscule (see 1507060040). Meanwhile, the Charter/BHN/TWC deal could mean a blow to the cable modem industry, modem manufacturer Zoom Telephonics said in separate comments posted Tuesday. While Comcast and TWC customers who use their own cable modems save $8 to $10 on their monthly bills, Charter has no such discount, and "bringing that policy to Time Warner Cable could severely hurt U.S. retailing of cable modems, Zoom Telephonics, Time Warner Cable customers and customer choice," Zoom said. Charter also continues to require that cable modems it certifies first be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, though that Wi-Fi Alliance approval "is time consuming and expensive" and something other multisystem operators do not require, Zoom said.