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  2. December 2015

December 2015

FCC OKs Altice-Suddenlink Deal

The Federal Communications Commission has stamped its approval on Altice Group’s proposed $9.1 billion acquisition of Suddenlink Communications. Altice and Suddenlink announced the deal in May, with Altice agreeing to acquire a 70 percent interest in the mid-sized, St. Louis (MO)-based company, which has about 1.5 million subscribers in about dozen states, including Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona. France-based Altice also has a deal in place to acquire Cablevision Systems for $17.7 billion, a move that makes Altice the fourth-largest US cable operator.

“We conclude that granting the Applications serves the public interest,” the FCC said in an order and opinion released Dec 18. “Based on our careful review of the record, we find the transaction is unlikely to result in any significant public interest harms,” the FCC continued. “We find that the transaction is likely to result in some public interest benefits of increased investment in local networks facilities and broadband services in Suddenlink’s service territory.” The Department of Justice signed off on the deal Dec. 11.

Appeals Court won’t reconsider ruling upholding NSA spying

A federal appeals court declined to take up a lower court’s decision upholding National Security Agency surveillance, in a blow to privacy advocates who have called the agency’s data collection unconstitutional. In an order, Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that critics of the NSA could not get a final judgment on just one component of their sweeping lawsuit.

The potential unconstitutionality of the NSA’s Upstream Internet collection could not be disentangled from the broader set of questions about the spy agency’s collection of people’s records, Judge McKeown insisted. As such, the matter should be considered alongside the full set of 17 charges brought against the NSA seven years ago, she ruled, and not in a “piecemeal” fashion, as the lawsuit attempted to do. “Both sides point fingers as to why no final decision has been reached,” McKeown wrote in the order. “We do not take sides in that debate, except to say that the parties’ and judicial resources would be better spent obtaining a final judgment on all of the claims, instead of detouring to the court of appeals for a piecemeal resolution of but one sliver of the case.”

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