There’s nothing more successful for billion-dollar businesses than getting a billionaire president with a billionaire cabinet and a legislative branch filled with people who wish they were billionaires. While Charter’s merger to Time Warner Cable last year was a lame reminder of how monopolies and duopolies are almost essentially the same thing, the new FCC—helmed by big communications stooge Ajit Pai—got rid of the only competitive requirement in the merger.
The FCC's approval of the Charter/Time Warner Cable merger last year required Charter to deploy broadband with download speeds of 60Mbps to at least two million residential and small business locations, of which at least one million would have to be in areas served by at least one other high-speed provider. The FCC's then-Democratic leadership said that "overbuilding" in areas served by only one ISP would bring lower prices and greater choice to consumers.
But the FCC's new Republican leadership has now eliminated the overbuild portion of the merger condition so that Charter can instead provide two million new connections in areas that don't already have high-speed service. Reuters reported the move today, and an FCC spokesperson confirmed it to Ars. The full order has not yet been released.
Pai’s argument, and one lobbied for by smaller ISPs, was that Charter was unlikely to go up in competition against bigger companies like Comcast, and instead would squeeze out smaller internet providers. The lobbying groups said the same thing that the big companies say—competition means sad face emoji. Here’s the American Cable Association (ACA) arguing against the requirement last year:
The requirement on Charter to overbuild competitors will harm consumers in two ways. First, it will harm Charter's customers by preventing Charter from investing its resources most efficiently, such as by upgrading its networks to higher speeds. Second, it will harm customers of local, small providers when these customers are satisfied with their existing service.
Do Republicans have a better plan? No. Will Chairman Pai ask for requirements that would force meaningful competition between internet service providers? Nope. As far as the idea that a company like Charter might “invest” in “upgrading its networks to higher speeds,” big telecoms like Charter/Time Warner are seemingly always getting sued for not fulfilling any of those exact promises.