Charter’s vague compliance claims should be publicly verified by CPUC

29 January 2019 by Steve Blum
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Charter Communications claims it’s providing near-gigabit level broadband service in virtually all of its Californian territory. Well, some of its Californian territory: in a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission, in opposition to a formal vetting of its claims that it is complying with service upgrade conditions imposed by the CPUC when it received approval to buy Time Warner cable systems, Charter says “it is already making service available at 940 Mbps to over 99% of the relevant households passed as of the end of year 2018”.

The filing doesn’t define “relevant” although it’s easy to assume it means all Californian households that had access to broadband service at the time of the merger. Maybe that’s because that’s what it means. Or maybe because Charter is hoping that commissioners are sloppy readers and won’t notice the weasel word.

It is also to be hoped that commissioners will take notice of another filing by Charter earlier this month, in which it promised to finish analog to digital upgrades in several California communities later this year. That’s a direct admission that it hasn’t met another CPUC imposed condition that required those upgrades to be completed by last November. There’s been no public announcement, by Charter or the CPUC, that an extension was requested or granted, although I suppose it’s possible some kind of understanding was reached behind closed doors. Or maybe Charter is hoping that commissioners won’t notice the disconnect.

I know from personal experience that Charter’s first impulse when asked to document compliance is to withhold as much information as possible, offering only as much as you might otherwise glean from their advertisements and other public statements. The threat or reality of CPUC action is an effective way of holding them accountable for a promise, and for holding their attention while they make good on it.

The CPUC should not take self-interested and unverified statements written by Charter’s lawyers at face value. Nor should it allow Charter to hide everything behind a blanket claim of confidentiality. Now is a good time to take a hard, quantitative and verified look at how – whether – Charter has met all of the statewide conditions the CPUC imposed on it in 2016. The matter should be reopened, investigated and, absent a compelling reason to suppress specific information, the results and underlying data should be made public.

Quickly.

I assisted the City of Gonzales with its successful effort at the CPUC to force Charter to upgrade. I am not a disinterested commentator. Take it for what it’s worth.