Dish Network Asks FCC to Reject Time Warner-Comcast Merger

Dish Network representatives have requested the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reject a merger proposal with Time Warner, as it may "present serious competitive concerns."

Jeffrey Blum, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for Dish Network, explained the union might create an enormous company that would be impossible to compete with. The merger will allow the two entities to come up with affordable prices for their services. Not only that, programmers will be incentivized to charge higher rates from other providers such as Dish because a big company will be able to command lower prices from programmers.

Blum presented three "choke points" for other players in the industry. Dish argued the merger will harm the healthy competition in the field and will also affect the direct communication to consumers as Comcast will gain too much control of the Internet connections, last-mile connections, and programming cost leverage.

"Each choke point provides the ability for the combined company to foreclose the online video offerings of its competitors," Blum wrote in the filing, cited by Businessweek.

Company executives of Dish Network including chairman Charlie Ergen met with FCC chairman Tom Wheeler on Monday regarding the deal. The filing mentioned that Dish also met with Roger Sherman, chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, a division of the FCC.

The commission was reportedly considering Comcast's proposal to acquire Time Warner for at least $45.2 billion. Research agency SNL Kagan calculated Comcast would be able to establish its presence in 16 of the 20 largest cities of the United States, as well as connect 33 percent additional broadband subscribers.

A Comcast spokeswoman emailed the Wall Street Journal about the issue, saying: "Dish not wanting stronger competitors isn't surprising and isn't new. Every market we operate in is highly competitive and Dish has a national footprint available in tens of millions of more homes than a combined Comcast-Time Warner Cable."

Real Time Analytics