Comcast will include up to six months of free broadband for families new to Internet Essentials and forgive past-due bills for low-income families that apply for the service, said Executive Vice President David Cohen in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/1qUA60Y): “We're doing this because there is no more important back to school supply than Internet service at home.” The past-due bill amnesty applies to bills more than a year old for households that are otherwise eligible for IE, said the cable ISP. “If customers’ outstanding bills are less than a year old, however, then we would like them to settle that debt with us before they can be eligible to apply for the program,” Cohen said. “We are willing to work with families whose debt is reasonable enough that they could pay us back in installments.” The complimentary six months of broadband applies to families that receive approval for Internet Essentials between Aug. 4 and Sept. 20, Cohen said. “With the merger with Time Warner Cable, we see a tremendous opportunity to bring the benefits of Internet Essentials to millions of additional families in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Kansas City and Charlotte.” Comcast started Internet Essentials about when it got 2011 FCC approval for buying control of NBCUniversal.

Disney and the National Cable Television Cooperative reached a multiyear distribution agreement, they said in a news release Friday (http://es.pn/1pMFyMM). NCTC members will get access to Disney and ESPN channels on their TVs and digital devices, they said. The deal includes the Disney & ESPN Networks Group VOD offering WATCH, and new channels including Fusion, the SEC Network, Longhorn Network, and ESPN Goal Line, the release said. NCTC members will continue to have access to Disney and ESPN channels such as the Disney Channel, Disney Junior, ESPN, and ABC Family, it said.

Charter Communications successfully tested components of its downloadable security system in a prototype set-top box, the company said in a report to the FCC posted July 31 in docket 97-80 (http://bit.ly/1u7p2ej). Such status reports were one of the conditions of the waiver of the commission’s CableCARD rules granted to the operator last year. Charter is still in talks with a maker of consumer electronics to develop a set-top box using Charter’s system for retail sale, the report said. Charter said it has deployed 1.38 million set-tops with integrated security.

Over 588,000 CableCARDs have been deployed for use in retail devices by Cablevision, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable, NCTA said in a report filed in FCC docket 97-80 Thursday (http://bit.ly/1uLEYXV). Combined with the next four largest cable companies’ deployments, there are 620,000 CableCARDs deployed for retail devices, and over 48 million in operator supplied boxes, said the association. Cablevision has 37,570 CableCARDs deployed, Charter has 52,341, Comcast has 351,447, Cox has 53,655 and Time Warner Cable has 93,341, NCTA said.

The FCC won’t terminate Adams Cable Equipment’s CableCARD waiver for filing its status report four months late, said a Media Bureau order Thursday (http://bit.ly/1AEp0PJ). The bureau agreed with a petition filed by ACE (CD July 9 p19) that the delay in reporting “did not materially affect the public interest benefits that the Bureau found in the ACE Waiver Order,” said order. “We caution ACE to diligently meet its next reporting deadline.” The bureau also granted an ACE request that the deadline for the next status report be extended from December to January.

The ReelzChannel asked the FCC to consider imposing conditions on the AT&T/DirecTV deal to avoid practices or proposals that adversely affect independent non-broadcast networks. Conditions that address issues like prohibiting unreasonable most favored nation (MFN) provisions and discrimination in distribution negotiations and agreements may allow such networks a more level playing field “on which to compete with their programming and ideas,” Reelz said Wednesday in an ex parte filing in docket 14-90 (http://bit.ly/1lgtJx2). Reelz didn’t oppose the transaction, it said. Reelz is concerned about unconditional MFNs, which allow a multichannel video programming distributor “to cherry pick whatever terms it wants from each of that programmer’s carriage deals,” it said. Unconditional MFNs “will reduce competition, innovation and diversity of voices, to the detriment of the consumer,” it said.

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau seeks comment on a Mediacom petition (CD July 25 p13) that asks the FCC to restrict programmers from requiring bundling and other concessions during negotiations for their content, said a bureau public notice Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1s4VNsc). The public notice, included in Wednesday’s Daily Digest, gives 30 days to comment. An FCC decision to open a rulemaking in reaction to the petition would be a concern for content companies, said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant in an email to investors Wednesday. He suggested it might not be coincidental that the Mediacom petition was put out for comment on the same day that Chairman Tom Wheeler sent a letter to Time Warner Cable over the company’s Los Angeles sports programming dispute (CD July 30 p7). (See separate report above in this issue.)

Comcast’s proposed deal to sell Time Warner Cable customers to Charter Communications, if Comcast/TWC is approved, would strengthen Charter by enhancing and rationalizing its geographic footprint, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge and Executive Vice President-Government Affairs Catherine Bohigian told all five FCC members and their aides in separate meetings July 24, said an ex parte notice (http://bit.ly/WLCmKB) posted in docket 14-28 Monday. The deal would also increase Charter’s scale, “ensuring that customers in the systems acquired by Charter will be served by a stronger competitor,” the filing said. Reclassifying broadband under Title II to approve net neutrality regulations would be “both unnecessary and harmful” and “would upend the current climate of regulatory predictability,” as well as harm private investment and ultimately consumers, Charter said.

The FCC should grant Comcast a waiver of its neighborhooding order to let the cable operator fulfill the terms of its settlement with Bloomberg, that programmer said in a waiver petition posted Tuesday to docket 11-104 (http://bit.ly/1s24tzG). Under the terms of the settlement, Comcast has agreed to place Bloomberg Television alongside Comcast’s competing business channel CNBC in many of its systems. In systems where CNBC is in the “news neighborhood” of other news channel, this complies with the neighborhooding order, Bloomberg said. In other systems, where CNBC is outside the news neighborhood, the settlement agreement conflicts with the neighborhooding order. “In Bloomberg’s view, proximity to CNBC, its chief competitor, is preferable to placement in a news neighborhood that lacks CNBC,” said Bloomberg. To allow that to happen, the commission should waive the order for the “small number” of Comcast systems where CNBC is not in the news neighborhood, Bloomberg said. Comcast supports the request, the petition said.

Bright House Networks chose BlackArrow to manage the execution of dynamic ad insertion in its on-demand and multiscreen TV products. Bright House will use BlackArrow “to increase the availability of advertising inventory for local and regional markets in the future,” BlackArrow said Monday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1rLgfk6). Bright House will now be able to deliver timely and relevant ads across its on-demand platforms, BlackArrow said.