Charlie Ergen, chairman of the Dish Network, met with officials of the Federal Commuications Commission on Monday to discuss why he thinks Comcast's $45 billion deal to take over Time Warner Cable would pose problems for the industry and consumers.
The move "presents serious competitive concerns for the broadband and video marketplaces and therefore should be denied,"
Deadline.com reports that Dish told all five FCC commissioners. "There do not appear to be any conditions that would remedy the harms that would result from the merger."
The concern if the move precedes, Ergen says, is that Comcast would have a lock on last-mile connection to homes and how individual cable companies access their network.
"Each choke point provides the ability for the combined company to foreclose the online video offerings of its competitors," the site reports the company as saying.
A merger would enable those two companies to demand higher prices from programmers, which in turn will "extract even higher rates from smaller pay-TV providers like Dish in order to compensate the programmers for lost revenue," Ergen is quoted as saying.
Time magazine reports that Dish argues that the speed of streaming services like Netflix could be slowed or greatly altered at the point where Internet providers transfer it to consumers.
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