An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Charter Communications won’t be kicked out of New York after all. Nine months after a New York government agency ordered Charter to leave the state over its alleged failure to comply with merger conditions, state officials have announced a settlement that will let Charter stay in New York in exchange for further broadband expansions. The settlement will enforce a new version of the original merger conditions and require a $12 million payment, about half of which could help other ISPs deploy broadband.
The State Public Service Commission (PSC) had voted in July 2018 to revoke its approval of Charter’s 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable (TWC), saying Charter failed to meet interim deadlines for broadband-expansion requirements. The order, which came just a month after a $2 million fine, would have required Charter to sell the TWC system to another provider. But the PSC never enforced the merger revocation order as it repeatedly granted deadline extensions to Charter while the sides held settlement talks. The result is a proposed settlement between Charter and the state Department of Public Service (DPS) that was announced Friday. “Pursuant to the agreement, Charter would expand its network to provide high-speed broadband service to 145,000 residences and businesses entirely in Upstate New York; the network expansion would be completed by September 30, 2021 in accordance with a schedule providing frequent interim enforceable milestone requirements; and Charter will pay $12 million to expand broadband service to additional unserved and underserved premises,” a DPS statement said.
Half of the $12 million could go back to Charter but they’d “have to use it to deploy broadband to locations in addition to the 145,000 already required,” the report notes. “The other $6 million would fund broadband deployment projects in a competitive bidding process, and it could thus end up going to Charter’s competitors — although Charter would be eligible to bid for the funding, too.”
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Source:: Slashdot