charter

Cable's broadband monopoly profile sharpens with 2017 results

16 March 2018 by Steve Blum
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Share of U.S. broadband households, as of 31 December 2017. Source: Leichtman Research Group.

Comcast and Charter own half of U.S. residential broadband subscribers, and their share of the market – if you want to call it that – is growing. That’s one of the conclusions gleaned from a tabulation of year-end 2017 financial reports by Leichtman Research Group. As with a similar count by FierceTelecom, the numbers show telcos continue to bleed subscribers profusely, while cable – and the overall broadband universe – keep on growing.… More

CPUC rejects almost all attempts to block broadband infrastructure subsidies

2 February 2018 by Steve Blum
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Just a relative handful of census blocks in California will be excluded from state broadband infrastructure subsidies as a result of the first round of jus primae noctis right of first refusals granted to incumbent providers by the California legislature. Four service providers filed claims, and three were completely rejected by California Public Utilities Commission staff. The fourth was partially accepted.

Only one of California’s big monopoly-model broadband service providers tried – unsuccessfully – to make a play.… More

Four ISPs claim California right of first refusal for broadband subsidies, but big telcos sit it out

18 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Four Internet service providers exercised their jus primae noctis right of first refusal for California broadband subsidy priority by Tuesday’s deadline. That’s assuming all four got it right, which is doubtful.

When the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) program was turned into a piggy bank for AT&T and Frontier rewritten last year, one of the benefits lawmakers slipped into the bill was an annual opportunity for incumbent providers to claim unserved areas, in exchange for a promise to upgrade broadband service within six months.… More

FCC bases big decisions on small facts spooned out by big telecoms companies

16 November 2017 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission jumped in on the side of Charter Communications in a dispute with the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. The case was bumped to a federal appeals court – the MPUC lost the first round – and now the FCC has moved in to protect its turf.

The question is whether Minnesota can regulate voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phone service the same way it does old style analog service. There’s a great article by Jon Brodkin in ArsTechnica that goes through the details of the case, so I won’t repeat it here.… More

New York fines Charter $13 million for stalled upgrades

21 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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The New York State State Public Service Commission has slapped a $13 million fine on Charter Communications, as punishment for missing broadband expansion requirements attached to regulatory approval of its purchase of Time Warner Cable systems last year. According to a story by Kendra Chamberlain in FierceCable, Charter’s build out in New York fell far short…

The agreement included statewide speed upgrades reaching 100 Mbps by 2018 and 300 Mbps by 2019, and a timeline for building out its broadband network in chunks of over 36,000 new residents and businesses per year, to be completed by 2020.

… More

Charter's broadband is not the help poor people need, CPUC says

22 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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But check out what’s on pay per view.

Charter Communications lost its latest battle to keep free WiFi service out of public housing in California, but the defeat came long after the war ended in victory for cable companies and their lobbying front organisation in Sacramento. It means that 47 publicly subsidised communities, scattered across the state, get to keep grant money they received from the California Advanced Services Fund to install broadband facilities. Most of them had opted for WiFi systems that would offer slow connections at no cost to residents.… More

Big telecoms mergers could test Trump's anti-trust chops

10 August 2017 by Steve Blum
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There’s a lot of sniffing around telecoms companies in these dog days of summer. Softbank, Japanese tech investment giant which owns Sprint, is reported to be sniffing around T-Mobile, with a merger in mind. If it happened – if regulators allow it to happen – it would take the U.S. mobile telecom sector down to three companies, from the current four.

Charter Communications is getting a lot of attention, too. Softbank first tried to engineer a merger, and when that failed began talking about buying the company outright.… More

Charter moves fast where fiber competition looms

22 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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But is it fast enough?

If you want to steer telco and cable company capital investment toward your community, apply competitive pressure, preferably with a full scale fiber to the home project. Once again, that lesson has been learned as the simple and reliable mechanics of microeconomic theory have pushed a major cable company to accelerate spending in an area it has long ignored.

Charter Communications is required to upgrade the antique analog cable systems it has long maintained in redlined communities.… More

Cable companies will double broadband prices because they can

19 April 2017 by Steve Blum
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Source: New Street Research, via *FierceCable*

In a competitive market, pricing is dynamic – you can’t reliably plan more than one or two moves ahead. But in a de facto monopoly – either a single seller or a duopoly with a weak second banana – you can lay out a long term roadmap and follow it relentlessly.
That’s what one noted financial analyst thinks the two big U.S. cable companies are doing. According to a story in FierceCable, Jonathan Chaplin, an analyst at New Street Research, thinks cable broadband prices will double in the coming years…

“Comcast and Charter have given up on usage-based pricing for now; however, we expect them to continue annual price increases,” Chaplin said.

… More

Net neutrality is carefully tailored, FCC jurisdiction paramount says Charter

28 March 2017 by Steve Blum
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Master of disguise.

Proving the adage that it’s an ill wind that blows no good, Charter Communications is taking shelter behind the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service. In a request submitted to a federal court in New York (h/t to the Hollywood Reporter), Charter argued that the New York attorney general shouldn’t be allowed to sue it in state court over consumer fraud allegations, because the FCC has preempted such matters when it issued its network neutrality order in 2015.… More