Charter/BHN/TWC To Lead to Usage-Based Pricing, Dish Network Says

Despite its protestations, Charter Communications is on a path to usage-based pricing (UBP) for broadband services, Dish Network said in an FCC filing posted Monday in docket 15-149. The heavily redacted filing pointed to internal documents as indicating "New Charter will deploy UBP the minute after any condition prohibiting it expires." UBP restricts consumers' Internet use and can be used by ISPs to discriminate against third-party services through zero rating, Dish said. "We already see this in the marketplace: Comcast's own services are exempt from the caps on Internet usage the company imposes on some of its customers." The companies Charter is trying to buy can't be expected to moderate Charter's plans as Time Warner Cable "is well known as the industry pioneer in UBP," Dish said. Dish repeatedly has urged the FCC to deny Charter's purchase of Bright House Networks and TWC (see 1512070025). In a statement Monday, Charter said, "There is no more friendly broadband provider to [online video providers] than Charter. Charter’s slowest speed is 60 Mbps, we have no data caps, no usage based pricing, no contracts and no modem fees. Also, Netflix, who strongly opposed to the Comcast/TWC transaction, supports the Charter, TWC and Bright House transactions.” Charter also noted that during the company's Q3 earnings call in October, Chief Financial Officer Chris Winfrey in response to a question about future adoption of UBP said, "We don't do it because we want to sell more services -- that's our business model [and] we don't have any plans to change it."