Cablevision still expects its takeover by Altice to close in Q2, as regulatory review is proceeding "as expected," the cable company said Thursday as it announced its Q4 results. Cablevision said it ended the year with 2.59 million video customers, down 87,000 from the end of 2014; 2.81 million high-speed Internet customers, up 49,000; and 2.2 million voice customers, down 36,000. Those video declines were down compared with the losses seen in 2014, Cablevision said. Service initiatives led to 23 percent fewer trouble call truck rolls and 33 percent fewer repeat trouble calls from 2014, it said. The company also ended the year with 1.4 million Optimum Wi-Fi access points deployed. For Q4, revenue was little changed at $1.63 billion, the company said. The FCC unofficial 180-day shot clock for reviewing Altice/Cablevision stood at 112 days on Thursday. As part of its review of Altice/Cablevision, the FCC Thursday issued a protective order limiting access to proprietary or confidential information filed in docket 15-257. The order allows for submitting parties to designate certain types of information as highly confidential, and access to that information is limited to outside counsel of record and outside consultants, as well as their employees who sign acknowledgements of the terms and conditions of the protective order. Cablevision stock closed Thursday at $32.45, up 0.25 percent.

More collaboration from the cable and other industries is needed for energy management in smart-tech households to take off, a Parks Associates conference in Austin was told. Dennis Mathew, vice president of Comcast Cable's Xfinity Home, said many consumers aren’t aware of the value of energy management in a smart home ecosystem. To increase engagement, the key is “finding a direct path to deliver the automated energy solution at little cost or effort,” he said, citing Xfinity’s interactive EcoSaver tool that consumers can use to measure energy savings. Forty-nine percent of U.S. broadband households plan to buy a smart home device by the end of the year, said Parks Associates Tuesday.

LG Uplus adopted Conexant Systems’ CX2092x system on a chip for voice control in the LG tvG woofer set-top box and LG IoT Hub, Conexant said Tuesday. Conexant's technology eliminates background noise and allows users to issue speech commands from anywhere in a room without interference from other sounds, the company said.

The FCC granted a Comcast request ending rate regulation in a slew of Minnesota communities by declaring them subject to effective competition. In an order Wednesday, the Media Bureau rejected oppositions by the North Metro Telecommunications Commission, North Suburban Communications Commission and South Washington County Telecommunications Commission that argued that the method of determining the proper ZIP codes was unverified and that testing the underlying data wasn't possible. The bureau said the Minnesota local commissions hadn't identified any specific ZIP code errors. The order covered areas with close to 75,000 households, the largest of which was the city of Woodbury.

Broadening the multichannel video programming distributor definition to include some forms of online video distributors would remove a copyright problem that would allow "immediate introduction" of Internet distribution of local broadcast stations to IP-enabled devices, the Telletopia Foundation said in an FCC ex parte filing Wednesday in docket 14-261. It recapped a meeting between Telletopia and a staffer from Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel's office. The nonprofit has been actively lobbying for the MVPD redefinition (see 1511100014 and 1512100017) that Chairman Tom Wheeler's office had once said was a major priority, though Wheeler has since pulled back, indicating in December such a reclassification could still be part of some other video proceeding this year (see 1512170046). In its filing, Telletopia said it offered the argument that multichannel content offerings not providing local broadcast signals or taking advantage of the consent benefits of MVPD regulation shouldn't be subject to those MVPD rules, but that an OVD-MVPD seeking either retransmission consent or program access rules should be subject to those rules' obligations.

Charter Communications' buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable seems likely to get FCC approval by early April, Wells Fargo Senior Analyst Marci Ryvicker said in a note to investors Tuesday recapping investor meetings in New York held with "our regulatory contacts." Conditions on Charter/TWC/BHN likely will mirror those required in AT&T/DirecTV, such as expanded broadband deployment, commitment to a stand-alone broadband offering, a low-income Internet offering and adherence to net neutrality guidelines. Altice's buying Cablevision is similarly "on track" for FCC approval, though approval by the New York Public Service Commission could be a separate story, Wells Fargo said. It also said that with Nexstar's buying Media General, "there is nothing that stands out from a regulatory angle that would prevent a post-auction close."

The Stop Mega Cable coalition opposed to Charter Communications' proposed buys of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable is continuing lobbying efforts at the FCC. Representatives from beIN Sports, Consumers Union, Dish Network, ITTA and the Sports Fan Coalition met Tuesday with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's Chief of Staff Robin Colwell, said a filing Wednesday in docket 15-149. Stop Mega Cable said it reiterated its oft-repeated arguments (see 1602110045 and 1602090019) of the broadband, online video distribution and programming market harms that would come from consolidation of market power in New Charter's hands, as well as the likelihood of coordinated actions with Comcast. Charter has been trying to rebut some of those assertions via its company blog. Last week, it said that the New Charter business model is pro-OVD: "Simply put, we want our customers to use as much broadband as they want. If our customers want to stream their content from online sources beyond the cable box, they can do so. Our competitors don’t always feel this way, which is why some of them are trying to block this merger.”

Smaller is better when it comes to Charter Communications' buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, as New Charter "won’t represent a new ‘top dog’ among Internet and cable providers" if the $89.1 billion deals go through, Charter said in a blog post Tuesday. It focused on contrasting Charter/TWC/BHN with the failed Comcast bid for TWC, and said New Charter "will be significantly smaller than Comcast is today, and will face strong competition from the likes of AT&T, CenturyLink and Google -- all of whom are continuing to grow their footprint everywhere, including [in] the same areas that our companies already offer service." Charter also pointed to New Charter's relatively smaller command of the wired broadband and video markets compared with Comcast/TWC's, and to Netflix's support for Charter/TWC/BHN (see 1507150038). "The way we see it, New Charter will grow enough to provide real competition for those at the very top, while giving a louder voice to our values of customer service and innovation," Charter said. The FCC's unofficial 180-day shot clock for review of the deals stood Tuesday at 150.

The application seeking transfer of control of Wide Open West (WOW) to private equity firm Crestview is no longer getting streamlined treatment, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a notice Monday in docket 16-12. The bureau said that move follows a letter from the Justice Department asking the FCC to defer any action on the application while it, the departments of Homeland Security and Defense review the transaction for law enforcement, national security or public safety issues.

Charter Communications should be forced to widely carry at least three independent, unaffiliated news services and any independent network that already has a national footprint and carriage on some rival multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), Herring Networks President Charles Herring said on a phone call with FCC staff, according to an FCC filing Friday in docket 15-149. The call was to discuss Herring's proposal (see 1602190062) for independent network-centric conditions for approval of Charter's buys of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable. According to Herring, New Charter should need to certify within a year of the deals' close that those three news services are available to at least 75 percent of its subscribers on service tiers that are at least as widely subscribed to as tiers on which TWC-affiliated news services are carried. Herring also said that "to correct past harms and minimize concerns of discriminatory, anti competitive and retaliatory behavior," New Charter should be required to carry any national, 24/7 indie programmer with no common ownership with an MVPD or broadcaster that already is carried in at least 5 million U.S. homes and on at least two of its bigger MVPD rivals, those being AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish Network or Verizon Fios. If the indie network meets those terms, Herring said, it should get carriage for 10 years across all Charter systems at the same terms and conditions as the largest launched MVPD. Though seeking conditions, Herring previously has backed the Charter/TWC/BHN transaction. In a statement Monday, Charter said it "is committed to providing its customers access to diverse and independent programming and we carry more than 100 minority focused networks and offer more Spanish language programming than any other major provider. We appreciate the support for New Charter by numerous independent programmers including TV One, Baby First, RFD-TV, One World Sports, Fuse Media, Ovation, Inspire, AXS TV, The Blaze, Condista, Bounce TV, Crown Media, and Reelz.”