Netflix Backs Charter Buying Bright House, Time Warner Cable, It Tells FCC

Netflix backs Charter Communications' buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, the online video distributor said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday at the FCC in docket 15-149. Charter's settlement-free interconnection policy and plans to extend that two BHN and TWC "is a welcome and significant departure from the efforts of some ISPs to collect access tolls on the Internet," the online video distributor said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in FCC docket 15-149. As long as free peering is a condition of the BHN and TWC acquisitions, Netflix said, it would support it. Charter has had a settlement-less interconnection policy for years, and plans to keep one at least through 2018, the cable company said in a separate filing Wednesday. Charter submitted its recently updated interconnection policy, which indicates that applicants providing content to Charter customers can tie into its IP network, and those interconnections will be done "at no charge to either party for traffic exchange," Charter said.