Ergen to the FCC: Stop that merger — unless it’s ours.
Dish Network boss Charlie Ergen is all for mergers unless his rivals are getting together.
The satellite-TV provider, controlled by poker player Ergen, flagged a host of concerns about Comcast’s $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable in a filing Wednesday with the Federal Communications Commission.
Similarly, Dish told the FCC the proposed $48.5 billion deal between AT&T and DirecTV poses a competitive threat.
Ergen, meanwhile, has unsuccessfully tried to buy DirecTV, leaving him at the altar amid a burgeoning era of merger marriages.
The Denver-based company lobbied hard to join forces with telecom giant Sprint, and separately, in recent years, with wireless spectrum owner Clearwire.
The feds are currently soliciting comments about the Comcast-TWC deal.
The Dish letter, written by deputy general counsel Jeff Blum, suggests potential harms are unlikely to be blunted by government mandated remedies.
“High capacity cable broadband connections are the lifeblood of over-the-top video services,” the letter says. Dish is currently committed to creating such an Internet-delivered TV service that bypasses traditional cable TV pipes.
“Comcast-TWC will have at least three ‘choke points’ in the broadband pipe where it could harm competitors,” the Dish continued.
In response, Comcast said, “Dish has long been one of our most vigorous competitors, and unlike us has a national footprint available in tens of millions of more homes than a combined Comcast–Time Warner Cable. Dish not wanting stronger competitors isn’t surprising and it isn’t new.”