Charter Communications has settled with the New York State Public Service Commission for its failure to meet a build-out requirement tied to its purchase of Time Warner Cable last year, to the tune of $13 million.
“The Commission conditioned its approval of the merger on Charter’s agreement to undertake several types of investments and other activities,” said PSC interim CEO Gregg Sayre in a statement. “While Charter is delivering on many of them, it failed to expand the reach of its network to un-served and under-served communities and commercial customers in the time allotted.”
Charter received approval from the PSC for the TWC purchase on Jan. 8, 2016, and agreed to a number of conditions, including delivering broadband speed upgrades to 100 Mbps statewide by the end of 2018 (300 Mbps by the end of 2019) and building out their network to pass an additional 145,000 un-served or under-served homes and businesses within four years of the closing of the transaction. While Charter has reported that it completed the first speed upgrade ahead of schedule, as of May 18 it had only extended its network to pass 15,164 of the 36,250 premises it was required to pass in the first year, according to the PSC.
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