In a memo from Dish Network’s Senior Vice President and Deputy General Council Jeffrey Blum to the Federal Communications Commission, a series of meetings on July 7 indicate that the company has raised issue with the prospective merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Believing that the combined business could utilize “choke points,” it could leverage control over broadband to do harm. “The pending Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger presents serious competitive concerns for the broadband and video marketplaces and therefore should be denied,” said Blum. “There do not appear to be any conditions that would remedy the harms that would result from the merger.”
Satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp. urged the Federal Communications Commission to reject cable giant Comcast Corp.’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable Inc., saying the merger would harm competition, according to a regulatory filing. Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen met with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Monday and made his case against the $45 billion deal, which would unite the nation’s two largest cable companies. Among other things, Dish said, the merger “should be denied” because it would give the combined cable companies too much clout in the broadband marketplace. Mr. Ergen and senior Dish executives also met with Roger Sherman, chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, a division of the FCC, according to the filing. The agency could choose to approve the deal with conditions, but Dish says no potential regulatory conditions could “remedy the harms” of the merger. A Comcast spokeswoman said in an emailed statement that “Dish not wanting stronger competitors isn’t surprising and isn’t new.” She said “every market we operate in is highly competitive” and Dish “has a national footprint available in tens of millions of more homes than a combined Comcast-Time Warner Cable.”
