New York PSC Approves Charter Settlement After 'Tough Process'
The New York Public Service Commission voted 3-1 to approve the state’s settlement with Charter Communications. At a livestreamed Thursday meeting, commissioners noted regrets and lessons learned from the sometimes-contentious process between the PSC's threatening in July 2018 to boot Charter out of the state (see 1807270027) and this year’s settlement (see 1904190059).
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To avoid having to exit, Charter agreed this spring to expand broadband by Sept. 30, 2021, to 145,000 homes and businesses entirely in unserved and underserved areas of upstate and to spend another $12 million on additional broadband deployment. Thursday’s order moots the PSC’s 3-0 decision last year revoking approval of Charter’s buy of Time Warner Cable. It “delivers for New Yorkers especially in underserved areas of the states,” New York PSC Chair John Rhodes said at the meeting.
The settlement will “ensure that Charter’s network expansion only takes place in areas of Upstate New York where for the most part wireline broadband does not currently exist,” said the PSC order in case 15-M-0388. “It is therefore a reasonable resolution to the disputes by and between Charter and DPS Staff that have previously arisen in this case.” The order resolves New York Supreme Court litigation and closes without prejudice related case 18-M-0178 on whether Charter violated its New York City cable franchise. Charter is reviewing the order, a spokesperson said.
Commissioner Diane Burman is “comfortable with the path forward” but voted no due to many procedural concerns. “The ends don’t justify the means,” she said. Burman’s concerns began when Rhodes convened a July 2018 special session while she was away, and other commissioners voted 3-0 to revoke the state's OK of the deal.
Rhodes acknowledged a “tough process” and said he regretted not including Burman at the special session, though he noted he wanted to move “quickly and strongly.” Burman accepted the apology at the beginning of about 40 minutes of remarks. “I recognize that you are the chair and had the discretion and for your reasons chose to go forward with the special session,” but she remains concerned about “being silenced” even if it wasn’t intended: “You can’t cure [that] after the fact.”
Burman was the only currently sitting commissioner there in 2016 when the agency OK’d Charter/TWC, she noted. Time has shown “some of the things that we thought were easy … led to some difficulties and challenges and led to also confusion on what we actually meant.” She's disappointed the matter became “more about grandstanding and “taking shots at folks” than finding solutions.
The long series of extensions to reach settlement was “frustrating” for Commissioner James Alesi, he said: “We knew we had to get somewhere with this because it was on our plates,” even if not everyone liked how it got there. The PSC had to answer the “call of duty” to “serve the public interest,” he said.
Staff should involve commissioners in oversight of $12 million in additional broadband deployment spending agreed to by Charter, Burman urged. She asked that be more clear in the order, but Rhodes said the existing language would allow staff to do that. To ensure broadband goes where the state wants, Commissioner Tracey Edwards wants visibility into the “exception process” that Charter uses to decide what addresses it can’t reach and which addresses will be used as substitutes. It was Edwards’ first meeting.