A regulatory decision that could determine the future shape of the broadband market in California has been pushed back by more than a month.
The Public Utilities Commission was scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to approve Comcast s proposed merger with Time Warner Cable, a combination that would give the combined entity the dominant share of the cable and high-speed Internet access markets in the state. But after receiving a slew of comments about the proposed merger, the commission has pushed back a vote until its May 7 meeting.
In an email sent to interested parties on Wednesday, Karl Bemesderfer, the administrative law judge overseeing the commission s proceedings on the proposed merger, said he needed more time. Additionally, he noted that the commission plans to hold a public meeting on the merger in Los Angeles to get more feedback on it.
I have held my proposed decision in the above matter for two meetings … in order to give myself time to respond fully to the many comments filed on (it) and to rule on the various motions filed by the parties in the last few weeks, Bemesderfer wrote in the email.
Issued in February, Bemesderfer proposed decision recommended that the commission approve the merger, but only if it also but in place some 25 conditions that would seek to curtail anti-competitive actions by the enlarged Comcast and would require it to greatly increase its promotion of low-cost Internet access to low-income households.
Comcast has criticized those conditions, saying that some are beyond the authority of the PUC while others — most notably goals around increasing sign-ups of its low cost broadband service — are unrealistic and simply unattainable. Meanwhile, consumer groups, led by Consumers Union, have called on the PUC to reject the recommendation and block the merger. At the PUC s meeting in late February, which followed the release of Bemesderfer s proposed decision, Consumers Union and its allies submitted to the PUC the signatures of 90,000 Californians who had called on the agency to reject the merger.
The public meeting in Los Angeles, to be held April 3 at the commission s offices there, will be the second in the proceeding. The PUC held a similar meeting at its San Francisco office earlier this month. The new meeting, which the PUC just added to its schedule, is designed to get input from Time Warner and others in southern California potentially affected by the proposed merger, Bemesderfer said in his email.
Announced more than a year ago, the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger would combine the two largest cable providers in the nation and the first and third largest broadband providers. The combined company s wires would pass by 84 percent of California households and would have a virtual monopoly on high-speed Internet access in the state, according to Bemesderfer s own findings.
The $48 billion merger has to be approved by both state and federal regulators. Although the deal could still go forward nationally without the PUC s approval, its rejection could potentially derail the deal. As part of the merger, Comcast would get access to the Los Angeles market, the second largest in the country, which is seen by some experts as one of the key motivations for the deal. A PUC rejection of the deal would block Comcast from taking control of Time Warner Cable s Southern California operations.
