UPDATE Charter Communications is pushing back against the NY State Public Service Commission (PSC) who voted last week to revoke its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable saying, “we’ll litigate and we believe we’re in the right.” CEO Tom Rutledge delivered the news to investors at Tuesday’s Q2 earnings report as the company delivered aggressive plans on rolling out new mobile services requiring infrastructure support. Along with establishing a broadband network in New York state, Charter claims its newly-merged company (with Spectrum) has spent almost $16 billion on technology and infrastructure since 2014, and offers, “the industry’s fastest base broadband speed.”
“Just to put it in perspective, we’re operating in 41 states, we have thousands of franchise agreements and generally, we have good relationships with the communities we serve and we live up to our commitments, and we have in New York State,” Rutledge said.
The state accused Charter of noncompliance with broadband construction requirements in an attempt to serve 145,000 residential housing units and businesses within four years. The state PSC has issued millions of dollars in fines against the company, payable to State Treasury, for missed deadlines.
“We believe we’re in compliance with the plain reading and the buildout requirements that the state imposed on us in merger conditions and we have a very strong legal case and ability to defend ourselves,” Rutledge said. “And it could play out over a lengthy period of time if required. We do have labor issues in New York City which we believe have politicized the actions of the PSC, and so we’re concerned about that,” he told investors.
August 3, 2018
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