Altice's Planned Cablevision Acquisition Faces Calls for Conditions

Some parties are raising red flags about Altice's planned $17.7 billion takeover of Cablevision. Monday was the deadline for comments on the transaction, and critics in docket 15-257 voiced concerns about Cablevision corporate debt and Altice's lack of clarity on its broadband interconnection policies. The deadline for responses is Dec. 22.

The Altice deal, "as currently structured, poses considerable harm to consumers, workers and communities," Communication Workers of America said in comments posted Monday, criticizing what it said was Altice's frequent strategy of loading new acquisitions with debt and calling Altice's planned $1 billion in operating and capital expenditure cuts "draconian." "This translates into delayed network maintenance, reduced investment in next-generation infrastructure and massive job cuts," CWA said. The union said the FCC should request specific information on such issues as post-transaction financial and operational projections, employment, broadband expansion and expected synergy and cost-reduction plans, since the company was "silent on specifics" in its application.

If the FCC doesn't stop the Cablevision deal, CWA said, the agency should impose a series of commitments that would see Altice make specific, verifiable pledges in broadband expansion, service quality, and capital and operating expenditures, and holding the company to those pledges. The FCC also should set "reasonable limits on the ... dividends or other 'upstream' payments that Altice can extract from Cablevision," require Altice to maintain or grow employment after the transaction, and have Altice commit to recognizing any existing collective bargaining status of union workers, CWA said.

The FCC should designate Altice's Cablevision application for hearing, modem-maker Zoom Telephonics said in comments posted Tuesday, or, barring that, impose conditions that require its cable systems have a separate customer bill line item with the unsubsidized price for cable modem rentals, and that any Altice communications make clear those rental prices and give customers the right to opt out of renting one. Altice also should be required to have policies that allow attachment of nonharmful third-party cable modems to its network, Zoom said.

In its comments posted Tuesday, Cogent said it sought interconnection-centric conditions as "an assurance that the post-merger entity will adhere to historical and current industry norms." Altice's application notably lacked any details about broadband access and interconnection, Cogent said, It was Charter Communications' interconnection policies that netted it and Netflix as supporters of its proposed purchase of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, Cogent said, saying Altice should be required to interconnect with qualifying networks or edge providers and to augment capacity on a settlement-free basis, and it should agree to disclose all interconnection agreements for four years after the deal closes.

Altice "is not fit ... to operate and control broadband infrastructure and assets in the U.S.," MFRConsulting said in its filing posted Monday, saying Altice's depictions of synergies and other benefits "range from the fantastical to the dubious and unproven," and its claims about improvements it has made to its properties elsewhere around the world are exaggerated. MFR -- which did not propose any conditions as an alternative to opposition -- also said Cablevision under Altice would be at "risk of default and even bankruptcy" due to the high debt levels, which could hurt its ability to compete with rival broadband providers.

MFR previously raised questions about Altice's also pending buy of Suddenlink, though it didn't explicitly object to it. When asked Tuesday about the state of the Suddenlink deal approval, the FCC didn't comment.

In a statement Tuesday, Altice said it "has a track record of investment, innovation and customer service in all the communities we serve. ... As in all of our other territories we expect to deliver significant benefits to consumers and their communities."