Charter has already been fined $13 million for failing to complete some fairly modest broadband deployment conditions attached to the company's $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Now Charter's facing additional scrutiny after regulators discovered the company hasn't been entirely truthful about which service addresses were upgraded by the company as required by its agreement with New York State.
Stop the Cap notes that the New York State Public Service Commission
announced this week (pdf) that the Commission is seeking a possible revocation of Charter Communication’s NYC franchise agreement and a $1 million fine for failing to meet its network buildout obligations agreed to as part of its 2016 merger with Time Warner Cable.
The PSC effectively accused Charter of lying to regulators in the company's most recent milestone report, when it asserted it had expanded service to 12,467 addresses in New York City. But when the PSC examined the 490 service addresses Charter claimed to have given service for the first time, they found numerous instances where customers at these locations were already served by Charter.
“In a more egregious example, Charter also listed the Reuters Building as countable toward the December 2017 target in Charter’s January 2018 filing, which has a listed address of 3 Times Square,” the PSC wrote. “Staff could not find any photos of the building prior to 2014 beside aerial views, but construction was completed in 2001, well before the effective date of the current franchise agreements."
In other words, the PSC is accusing Charter of lying about deployments to pretend that it had met merger conditions. And the PSC says it's contemplating either a major fine or revoking Charter's New York City franchise agreement entirely (something history suggests would never actually happen).
"It is critically important that regulated companies strictly adhere to the state’s rules and regulations,” said Commission chair John B. Rhodes. “If a regulated entity like Charter’s cable business decides to violate or ignore the rules, we will take swift action and hold them accountable to the full extent of the law.”
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 appear to be somewhat...
theatrical in nature.