Stop the Cap! has filed a motion before California’s Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to request party status in the Charter-Time Warner Cable merger proceeding, better positioning ourselves to influence the outcome.

As other consumer groups in California continue to formally oppose the merger, we are also filing to ask regulators to consider our request to impose conditions on the deal should the CPUC decide to approve it anyway. As we promised after the New York Public Service Commission approved the deal with significant conditions, we are once again taking a hard look at Charter’s three-year commitment not to impose data caps or usage pricing — a term we find completely inadequate.

It remains our belief three years is far too short a commitment, and it is unlikely consumers will find plentiful alternatives for broadband service should Charter impose caps in 2019 anymore than they can today. As a reminder to consumers and regulators, deal conditions imposed by regulators on the 2011 merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal have already begun to expire, with relatively little change in competition in the marketplace.

Our late filing for party status comes partly in response to inadequate public notice from Charter Communications and new information and suggestions that came as a result of the New York State PSC proceeding that would be directly informative and beneficial for California residents.

In states where public utility regulators have approved the transaction with ‘most-favored state’ provisions, any benefits we can win for consumers in California will also apply in New York and other states as well.

As always, we are extremely grateful to our newest member of the Stop the Cap! team, Matthew Friedman, who has dramatically strengthened our ability to monitor the marketplace on the west coast to broaden our consumer protection efforts.

We remain an all-volunteer organization, so if you’d like to join our team, use the Contact Us button at the top of the page and send a message. We’d love to have more volunteers helping identify and write about pressing broadband issues throughout the U.S. and Canada, and we’re happy to help with the editing.

The full text of our motion appears below:

BEFORE THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
MOTION OF STOP THE CAP! FOR PARTY STATUS

I. Introduction
Pursuant to Rule 1.4 of the California Public Utilities Commission’s (“CPUC” or the “Commission”) Rules of Practice and Procedure, Stop the Cap! respectfully requests to be granted party status in the above captioned proceeding.

II. Background and Interest in this Proceeding
Stop the Cap! is a consumer group founded in 2008 to fight against the introduction of artificial limits on broadband usage (such as data caps, usage based pricing, and speed throttling) and to promote better broadband speeds and service for consumers. Our group does not accept funding from lobbyists, companies, or any individual affiliated with the telecommunications industry. We return all corporate donations.

Stop the Cap! understands that this is a relatively late file for party status. While Stop the Cap! is generally opposed to this transaction, we feel that the Intervenors are strongly making the case that the Commission should deny the application, and we would refrain from contributing in that regard. However, should the Commission approve this transaction, Stop the Cap! has a deep and detailed knowledge of data caps and usage based pricing (DC/UBP) from our past 8 years of work on this very specific issue. This information and experience would definitely aid the Commission’s process of tailoring effective mitigation conditions, and our input would be complementary to the existing Intervenors’. Based on our direct experience at the recent Los Angeles PPH, we now understand that an issue as complicated as DC/UBP can’t be effectively dealt with by us as an informal commenter. We have no lawyers guiding us through this process —we are merely a group of individual consumers who have banded together to address a common concern. We therefore respectfully request that the Commission forgive our late filing, and note that we would still be able to take part in full in the discussion of relevant conditions, should this transaction reach that stage.

As a party, Stop the Cap! would aim to protect and promote the public interest of our members and other Californians on the issue of DC/UBP. We have attached the discussion we submitted at the Los Angeles PPH to this filing. It details how the issue of DC/UBP affects numerous other concerns in this proceeding, and presents significant and numerous harms to consumers, especially to low income ones. The submission lays out how DC/UBP can increase prices, foster anti-competitive behavior, circumvent net neutrality, hinder innovation and investment, slow broadband deployment, threaten network security, remove educational opportunities, and can even completely erase any “lifeline” broadband condition this Commission may design. The document also explains why the CPUC’s approval of this transaction would make DC/UBP much more likely to be imposed on existing Time Warner Cable subscribers. It details TWC’s repeated and public pledge to “NEVER” impose DC/UBP on its customers. It discusses why the Commission should be particularly suspect of New Charter when it comes to DC/UBP. Finally, it shows that Charter’s opening testimony actually supports a mitigation condition that sunsets based on a competition test, as opposed to an arbitrarily short three years. This is the kind of information we can present to aid in the Commission’s decision making process.

III. Notice
Service of notices, orders, and other correspondence in this proceeding should be directed to Stop the Cap! [extraneous information deleted]

IV. Conclusion
Stop the Cap!’s participation in this proceeding will not prejudice any party and will not delay the schedule or broaden the scope of the issues in the proceeding. For the reasons stated above, Stop the Cap! respectfully requests that the CPUC grant this motion for party status filing.

Dated: February 2, 2016
Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Matthew Friedman
Matthew Friedman
Stop the Cap!