Charter rejects Dish's Board Chairman contentions, notes it will have only 21 percent market share

Charter Communications continues to work to obtain regulatory approval for its massive purchases of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, arguing that the resulting company -- dubbed New Charter -- would only service roughly 21 percent of all American broadband customers. Charter noted that figure is "less than Comcast and only slightly more than AT&T." Charter's latest statement on the company's proposed transaction essentially stands as a rebuttal to Dish Chairman of the Board Charlie Ergen and Dish Network, which have mounted a major offensive against the deal.

In a meeting with FCC officials, Ergen argued that Charter's proposed transaction "will create a suffocating duopoly: this transaction will result in two broadband providers controlling about 90 percent of the nation's high-speed broadband homes between them." Specifically, in a filing about the meeting, Dish noted that the so-called New Charter "would serve almost 30 percent of the homes in the United States that have broadband speeds of at least 25 Mbps." But Charter, in a recent filing with the SEC, blasted that claim: "New Charter would serve only 23 percent of subscribers receiving 25 Mbps and above," the company said in its filing, which it noted is "smaller than the percentage Comcast serves today."