The New York State Public Service Commission this week fined Charter $2 million --and threatened to revoke the company's franchise for failing to meet conditions affixed to its merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Charter had already been fined $13 million for failing to complete some fairly modest broadband deployment conditions attached to the company's $79 billion deal. But state investigators in more recent weeks found that Charter repeatedly lied about the work it had completed in order to try and trick regulators into thinking it was meeting the conditions.
That's been compounded by Charter's
attempts in court to claim that the FCC's net neutrality repeal order bans states from holding the company accountable as it tries to wiggle out of a seperate NY State lawsuit over substandard speeds and false promises to consumers.
Tired of the tap dancing by Charter, New York State officials this week dialed things up a notch, not only fining the company $2 million for continued violation of its merger promises, but threatening the company's franchise license in New York State if it doesn't stop playing legal and ethical patty cake.
"As a condition of our approval of Charter's merger two years ago, we required Charter to make significant investments in its network," the state PSC said in a statement (pdf). "Our investigation shows that Charter failed to meet its obligations to expand the reach of its network to unserved and underserved customers at the required pace and that it failed to justify why it wasn't able to meet its obligations."
Moreso, previous PSC inquires indicate that Charter routinely attempted to mislead regulators by making its deployments--and the work it had done for condition compliance--seem greater than they actually were.
Charter claimed its $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks would result in amazing "synergies" for consumers. Instead, most acquired customers received a rate hike and even
worse customer service than they'd already grown accustomed to under their previous ISPs. These additional broadband deployments were supposed to counter any potential problems the deal created, and even those now appear to be somewhat...
theatrical in nature.