Matt Daneman

The crafting of new confidentiality rules shouldn't put Charter Communications' buy of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable on hold, FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly said Thursday, urging the agency to begin its regulatory review. The FCC "should follow the direction that the D.C. Circuit previously provided in a similar case: 'The agency has access to the relevant documents at issue in this matter and can continue to evaluate the proposed merger....' So let’s start the ‘aspirational’ merger review shot clock and get on with the process," the two said in a statement.

That Charter Communications would end Time Warner Cable's paid peering and usage-based pricing policies came as little surprise to TWC and won't be a major broadband business disruption, TWC CEO Robert Marcus said Thursday. "Different companies have different philosophies," he said during a conference call on quarterly earnings. Charter earlier said it would extend its settlement-free interconnection policy to Bright House Networks and TWC once it bought the two (see 1507160021), following Charter's public interest statement in the merger that pledged broadband without data caps or usage-based pricing (see 1506250039).

Altice's $9.1 billion entrance into the U.S. cable market should include a $9.95 broadband offering for the types of households least likely or able to subscribe to broadband services, the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) said in one of the few comments submitted to the FCC as the European company looks to buy a majority of Suddenlink Communications by the end of the year.

SpaceX's experimental satellites to be tested next year in advance of the much larger low earth orbit (LEO) constellation it has planned for a global broadband service will turn off and on to avoid geostationary satellite signal interference, the company said in an Office of Engineering and Technology filing. The risks of those thousands of small satellites colliding with anything in orbit are microscopic, said the filing posted Monday.

The FCC Connect America Fund Phase II requirement of monthly broadband allowances of 100 GB could be a hurdle satellite broadband can't clear. "There is simply a physical limit to the amount of capacity that satellite broadband providers can make available," Hughes Network Systems said in a filing posted Monday in docket 10-90 in which it asked that a minimum use allowance be "a more achievable" monthly data allowance requirement of 50 GB. A universal requirement of 100 GB per month everywhere "is likely unattainable at this time" and could keep satellite broadband providers from being able to take part in the bidding, Hughes said.

Any FCC efforts to claw back Dish Network designated entity (DE) credits face a big hurdle within the halls of the agency itself. "The notion you'll get three votes on the eighth floor is far from certain," said a communications lawyer whose firm has done satellite work: "If you don't get majority approval on the eighth floor, it's nothing more than a staff recommendation."

Declaring itself interconnection fee-free helps Charter Communications' bid for regulatory approval to buy Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, said industry officials in interviews this week. By how much remains to be seen, they said. "I think it makes it a much easier sell," Cogent Communications CEO Dave Schaeffer said. "Anything they can show that they are willing to promote Internet growth ... will quell a lot of the concerns regulators had."

The set-top cable box -- and the monthly bill for renting it -- is increasingly in critics' crosshairs.

Somewhat the way the FCC was flooded with public comments regarding net neutrality, a collection of communications companies, trade organizations and advocacy groups is hoping to get similar public support -- if not the volume -- as they lobby regarding a variety of broadband-centric matters before the FCC. "You don't have to get net neutrality-type numbers," said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, one of the participants in a new campaign, dubbed "Competify." "If you have a large number of customers … file saying, 'There's not a lot of competition,' that’s something a chairman of the FCC can point to to say 'Look, I'm not making this up.'"

Mediacom’s attempt at pushing changes in retransmission consent rules at the FCC likely won't go far, the company acknowledges. But the FCC wasn't necessarily the intended audience when Mediacom this week petitioned the agency for rules largely blocking broadcasters' blackouts (see 1507070061). "I don't think the FCC will take it seriously," said Thomas Larsen, Mediacom group vice president-legal and public affairs. "If I was a betting man, I'd say the FCC sits on their hands. You throw out enough ideas, that's what we're hoping -- somebody [on Capitol Hill] will run with one of them. Maybe down the road a congressman or senator says 'You were told to serve the public; let's make it a requirement free TV is widely available or give us back your spectrum.'"