The FCC has WC Docket No.11-148 open for business, and its business will be to be the holding pen for comments on Time Warner Cable’s proposed $3B acquisition of another cable company, Insight Communications. The Federal Trade Commission has already signed off on the deal.
The FCC notes the applicants’ assertions that the deal is in the public interest, given improvements to the Insight systems that are planned under TWC’s ownership; that it does not diminish competition, since the two companies have very little territorial overlap.
The companies seek a waiver to get the deal through the approval process without seeking approval of each and every relevant local franchising authority on grounds of the lack of anticompetitive elements in the proposed transaction.
What overlap exists is in the Columbus OH area, and it affects only 2.6K homes passed, 0.2% of Insight’s homes passed total of 1.34M.
The deadline for comments is 10/27/11, with reply comments due three weeks after that on 11/14/11.
Insight will add 750K subscribers in the states of Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio to the TWC portfolio. 679K of them receive video, 537K receive high-speed data and 297K receive voice service.
