Charter Gets FCC Permission to Buy Cox and Become Largest ISP in the US

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

FCC rejects protests because Charter and Cox don't compete directly in most places:

Charter Communications, operator of the Spectrum cable brand, has obtained Federal Communications Commission permission to buy Cox and surpass Comcast as the country's largest home Internet service provider.

Charter has 29.7 million residential and business Internet customers compared to Comcast's 31.26 million. Buying Cox will give Charter another 5.9 million Internet customers. The FCC approved the deal on Friday, but the companies still need Justice Department approval and sign-offs from states including California and New York.

Opponents of Charter's $34.5 billion acquisition told the FCC that eliminating Cox as an independent entity will make it easier for Charter and Comcast to raise prices. But the FCC dismissed those concerns on the grounds that Charter and Cox don't compete directly against each other in the vast majority of their territories.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's primary demand from companies seeking to merge has been to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and policies. In a press release, the Carr-led FCC said that "Charter has committed to new safeguards to protect against DEI discrimination," and that Charter's network-expansion plans will bring "faster broadband and lower prices" to rural areas.

The merger was approved one day after Charter sent a letter to Carr outlining its actions to end DEI. Charter offers broadband and cable service in 41 states, while Cox does so in 18 states.

The FCC's Charter/Cox decision dismissed competition concerns raised in a November 2025 petition to deny filed by Public Knowledge, the Communications Workers of America, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Center for Accessible Technology. The FCC said:

Petitioners argue that the Transaction would reduce the number of cable operators, making it easier for competitors, such as Comcast, to "benchmark" their pricing, promotions, bundling, and rate schedules to New Charter. Specifically, they argue that "[r]educing the number of major cable operators makes it easier for each to benchmark pricing decisions against others, reducing competitive pressure across the industry."

Citing the literature on multimarket contact, they further argue that "the merger could transform the competitive landscape such that New Charter becomes the benchmark for Comcast,... thereby enabling parallel behavior." We find this argument unpersuasive. First, there is very little multimarket contact in this case. Because cable companies have generally offered residential broadband service within their non-overlapping franchise territories, they compete directly against each other only at a very small number of locations.

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