FCC Seeking Interconnection, OVD Info as Part of Charter/BHN/TWC Review
Bright House Networks, Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable have an Oct. 13 deadline for turning over substantial amounts of data about their businesses to the FCC as part of the review of Charter's proposed $89.1 billion takeovers of BHN…
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and TWC. The data requests posted Monday run 44 pages long to BHN, 50 pages to TWC and 58 pages to Charter, and online video distribution (OVD) issues come up repeatedly in them. Among the information sought is how the three have responded to such online video distributors as Amazon Instant Video, CBS All Access, HBO Now, Hulu, Netflix, Sling TV and Vue; and information about any company decisions to block, hinder or prioritize any OVD service or content. Open Internet issues also play heavily in the data requests, with the FCC seeking Charter documents related to its rationale for not imposing usage-based caps on residential Internet service, as well as seeking copies of written communications with Akamai, Cogent, Google, Level 3, Limelight and Netflix regarding interconnection agreements. The FCC also asks for past, current and future deployment plans for IP set-top boxes, any OVD service, and time-shifted and place-shifted video programming. And the three also must identify each instance in which they looked into or considered introducing or acquiring an OVD service. The FCC also is demanding documentation that will describe the "specific precautions" to be in place to ensure Liberty Broadband -- which has a stake in Charter -- and Bright House parent Advance/Newhouse will not have undue influence on post-merger Charter and that those two -- as well as Liberty Broadband Chairman John Malone -- will not withhold programming from multichannel video programming distributors or OVDs to the benefit of post-merger Charter.