NTCA Says It Will Oppose Charter/TWC/BHN Minus Requirement It Join Incompas Video Co-op
Minus a condition requiring New Charter to join Incompas' proposed video programming purchasing cooperative, NTCA will oppose Charter Communications' planned buys of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, CEO Shirley Bloomfield told FCC officials including General Counsel Jon Sallet…
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and Owen Kendler, who's heading the agency's working team overseeing the deals' review. Such a cooperative would help offset the video market harms Incompas has previously pointed to (see 1601280047), Incompas CEO Chip Pickering said at the meeting, according to an ex parte filing Thursday in docket 15-149. A large multichannel video programming distributor like New Charter in the co-op would give it "the necessary scale to have an impact on programming prices to incent and enable small, competitive broadband providers to further invest in infrastructure," Pickering said. Rocket Fiber CEO Marc Hudson, also at the meeting, said the Detroit ISP has trouble securing video programming distribution rights, and without the proposed nonprofit co-op, it would have to sell video programming at break-even or a loss to compete with incumbent MVPDs. At the meeting, Incompas also proposed language for the New Charter co-op condition: that within three months of the close of the BHN and TWC takeovers, New Charter would enter into a memorandum of understanding about joining, and that it would join within six months of the close; and that New Charter would "participate in good faith as a member ... for no less than seven years." Charter didn't comment. In a separate ex parte filing Thursday in the docket, Charter recapped a meeting with Commissioner Ajit Pai Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, at which the company said it talked about the public interest benefits of the deals, including building out its base broadband speed of 60 Mbps without data caps throughout its larger footprint and building out a million line extensions.