New York Threatens To Kick Charter Out of State After Broadband Failures (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications could lose its authorization to operate in New York State because of its failure to meet merger-related broadband deployment commitments, a key government official said. NY Public Service Commission (PSC) Chairman John Rhodes said that "a suite of enforcement actions against [Charter] Spectrum are in development, including additional penalties, injunctive relief, and additional sanctions or revocation of Spectrum's ability to operate in New York State," according to a PSC announcement last week. Charter agreed to expand its network in exchange for state approval of its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC). New York officials say that Charter has failed to meet its commitments, even though Charter claims it has. Rhodes accused Charter of "gaslighting" and noted that the PSC has already ordered Charter to stop making misleading claims about its broadband deployment progress. The PSC last month ordered Charter to pay a $2 million fine and complete the promised network construction. If Charter doesn't meet its merger-related obligations, the company will "face the risk of having the merger revoked," the commission said at the time. A revocation of the merger could force Charter to spin off its Time Warner Cable division in New York, but it wouldn't affect Charter's ownership of TWC in other states.

Comments

Obligatory Nelson Muntz

[DontBeAMoran]

Haw-haw!

Pay attention Alanis

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Charter is about to ..... lose its charter.

About f**king time.

[sconeu]

These telecoms make all these promises to get regulatory approval and then never follow through.

It's about time someone held them to account (even if it's minor).

Re:About f**king time.

[jellomizer]

The Governor of NY, Andrew Cuomo, is probably trying for a 2020 bid against Trump, and facing reelection this year. While he has a track record of being conservative for a Democrat, he is trying to rebrand himself as progressive (the Anti-Trump) and pushing agendas he never cared for before.

Re:About f**king time.

[Darinbob]

Wait, which Trump? He's doing a terrible job, or have you not noticed his major free trade gaffes that pissed off every single senior Republican? Of course he seems to be changing his mind at the last minute, and this is his trademark style of deal making - keep threatening until someone blinks and then say "just kidding!" The economic damage to farmers (a core Trump base) is much larger than the tax cuts and his $12 pledge of subsidies isn't going to help much (and giving handouts to farmers just pisses them off, which he would know if he had ever met one).

His management of zero-tolerance at the border was laughably inept, separating parents from children with absolutely no idea how to reunite them sometime in the future (the post office knows how to track packages so maybe they should be in charge of the border?). What the hell were they thinking?

Trump seems to have a major case of a swollen ego and takes everything personally, he offends our allies and kisses our enemies, he seems to always switch his views and agree with whoever the last person he spoke too was which makes predicting his policies impossible, and he seems to pay more attention to conspiracy shows than to his own staff of advisors. He's only around because he's got a small but loyal base that is hoping to see the government burn to ash.

The republicans are also losing some long and short term members who are keeping to their standards and principles. I keep expecting the party to split but they seem to suck it up out of fear of an election backlash if they show any spine. Of course, the democrats are unorganized and inept and can't manage to show a united front, while the republicans will happily embrace the wacky wings of their party and show a united front of strange bedfellows and they beat the drums to get out the vote.

Escrow?

[RyoShin]

Wouldn't requirements like this--promise of some sort of future, demonstrable action in order to allow a current one--be good for an escrow-type setup? An approximate cost and timeline of the project is defined as part of the agreement for it, the promisor puts that amount into the escrow account, things move ahead. As the promisor makes and shows progress, they can remove funds from the escrow to cover those costs. If the project is satisfactorily completed, promisor gets anything left in the escrow account including any interest it may have earned. If the escrow account goes dry and the promisor does not complete the project as agreed, fine come into pay.

Should the promisor fail their duty, the government in question uses the funds to implement the action themselves (insomuch as the funds will actually allow) in addition to risk of the merger being revoked.

Puts an extra stick to the company to keep up their agreement.

Bah

[Greyfox]

Just allow municipal broadband, New York. We did that in Colorado and now everyone's slowly getting gigabit. And weed. OBTW gigabit internet is *awesome*. Also weed.

Re:Bah

[b0s0z0ku]

It appears to be legal, at least in NYC. Read about LinkNYC. As far as weed, looks like NY is moving in that direction, though not quickly enough. Enforcing weed wastes a lot of resources that could be put to better use.

Sadly, it likely is just posturing

[RevDisk]

Telecoms are big business, understand to regularly bribe politicians and typically have friendly endless court battles. Local and state governments can and will be overruled by federal courts. This has kinda be the way of things for decades. We pay telecoms substantial amounts to built broadband, in tax revenue. They don't spend the money. Or rather, they spend the money on everything except for broadband. They charge through the nose for relatively modest bandwidth (saving money on their backend). And then repeat.

Municipal ISPs can provide gigabit fiber, often with a backup of mesh WiFi of many/most areas, for very modest rates. Majority of the time it's not city employees doing the work, it's some outside small ISP doing everything. And they still pull a modest but respectable profit.

Until we reform the laws, which means addressing the corruption issues, the bandwidth picture is not going to change. Hell, you don't even need to do THAT. Just force telecoms to justify the money that they are given from taxes. It'd be hilariously easy to charge them with fraud.

Re:Cue whining of shills

[jellomizer]

Living in Charter/Spectrum territory. They have greatly increased internet speed for all the users with 100mbs as the baseline from 30mbs 2 years ago with TWC.
However their push was them saying how much they are going to expand coverage in the area. And NY should hold them to these claims. Bandwidth improvements is just a flip of a switch.