Charter and New York To Settle Broadband Deployment Dispute

Charter and New York Department of Public Service have come to an agreement over a broadband deployment dispute.

The agreement will not go into effect until after a 60-day public comment period and an approval from the New York Public Service Commission (PSC). The agreement, if approved, would resolve the dispute, and it would keep Charter’s business from being expelled from the state of New York.

The dispute arose when Charter acquired Time-Warner Cable in 2016. The New York PSC required that Charter update their broadband services as a condition of approving the acquisition, but since then, Charter has repeatedly failed to meet the requirements and they missed multiple deadlines. New York PSC fined Charter $3 million for missing the deadlines and told Charter to cease operations after 60 days (this deadline has been extended) and find a new buyer for their New York business.

Charter has stated that the issues were due to utility pole owners being slow about processing Charter’s applications. The New York PSC responded saying that the utility pole owners had processed thousands of Charter applications.

The terms of the Charter-Time Warner Cable acquisition required Charter to:
Upgrade broadband service speeds to 100 Mbps across the state by 2018 and 300 Mbps by 2019
Buildout their broadband to 145,000 underserved or unserved New York residents and businesses within four years of closing the acquisition deal

In addition to fulfilling the initial deal terms from the acquisition, Charter proposed making an additional $12 million investment toward the broadband buildout.

For more information on the Charter-New York PSC agreement, send us a message.