Altice isn't on a shopping spree for other U.S. communications companies, it said Thursday as it and Suddenlink Communications filed a joint application seeking regulatory approval of Altice's proposed takeover of Suddenlink. The application broadly spells out Suddenlink's expected ownership structure and makes a case for FCC approval, as the two said it would give Suddenlink "access to Altice’s operational expertise, scale and resources, thereby allowing [the combined companies] to become even more robust competitors in the marketplace for telecommunications services." Once the deal is concluded, Altice will indirectly own 70 percent of Suddenlink equity, with existing Suddenlink shareholders retaining the other 30 percent, the two said. Suddenlink would be the European telecommunications and cable company's entry into the U.S. market. It "has no existing interest in any United States communications entity, and thus Altice’s investment in ... will serve to bolster domestic voice, video, and broadband competition," the two said.

Time Warner Cable's four-year-old outdoor Wi-Fi network has grown to Dallas, San Antonio and Raleigh, North Carolina, the cable company said Thursday. The network -- part of TWC's network of 100,000 indoor and outdoor hot spots nationwide -- started in Los Angeles in 2011, and since expanded to New York City; Austin; Kansas City; Charlotte; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; San Diego and Palm Springs, California; and the state of Hawaii. It's available for free to Time Warner Cable residential Internet customers or on a pay-as-you-go basis to others.

Showtime will start streaming its programming online in July, first through Apple. The Showtime streaming service will be available initially via Apple products for $10.99 a month, the company said Wednesday, saying it expects to announce further providers later. The Showtime move comes on the heels of HBO's partnering with Apple to start a similar streaming service in April.

Consumers generally don't like their pay-TV or Internet service, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index's "ASCI Telecommunications and Information Report 2015" released Tuesday. Based on surveys of more than 70,000 consumers, the ASCI report looks at consumers' happiness with everything from their pay TV and Internet to phone service. Both pay-TV and Internet service received the lowest overall satisfaction rankings among the industries ASCI covers, with index scores of 63 each and with customer satisfaction for pay TV down 3.1 percent from the 2014 survey, while Internet was unchanged, the organization said. Among pay-TV providers, Verizon and its FiOS service was ranked highest, with an index score of 71, followed closely by AT&T's U-verse at 69 and satellite companies DirecTV and Dish, at 68 and 67, respectively. U-verse and FiOS were also the highest-ranked ISPs, with index scores of 69 and 68, respectively. Consumers' happiness with pay-TV service was down nearly across the board, as those surveyed gave lower rankings to everything from picture quality to understandability of bills, compared with 2014 numbers. The satisfaction with ISP service was more mixed, as consumers were happier with performance during peak hours but bearish on video streaming quality. Consumer satisfaction also was down 5.5 percent for wireline phone service and down 2.8 percent for wireless phone service, with Vonage and TracFone, respectively, garnering the highest consumer satisfaction rankings in those industries with Vonage rating 73 on the index and TracFone 77.

Bidders that can cover the most terrain should win out in the FCC’s Connect America Fund Phase II bidding, the American Cable Association said. The industry group’s Monday ex parte filing in docket 10-90, posted Tuesday, said association executives met last week with FCC officials to talk over the ACA’s proposal for how the competitive bidding should go for the buildout of improved broadband coverage across rural parts of the country. Giving extra weight to applicants that can serve the widest area of a region “will avoid the situation where a single bid for a single census block can prevail over a bid to build a great many census blocks throughout an entire area,” ACA said. Under the ACA proposal, a single round of bidding would be conducted in four consecutive stages, starting with networks capable of offering 1 Gbps/500 Mbps capacity, with the three subsequent stages offering less capacity to remaining census blocks. Applicants wouldn't include prices in their bids, with the expenses calculated by a price model and winning bids awarded based on maximum coverage in a county, ACA said.

Moving female watcher-oriented Game Show Network to a Cablevision's specialty sports tier filled with nothing but male-targeting networks is "nonsensical" and all about giving the cable company's affiliated networks the advantage, said David Goldhill, CEO of Game Show Network. It's about Cablevision's facing increasingly heated competition and not seeing the kind of value for GSN in relation to the higher carriage license fees it was demanding, countered Thomas Montemagno, Cablevision executive vice president-programming. Direct written testimony from the executives was among hundreds of pages of documents filed Tuesday with the FCC in docket 12-122 regarding GSN's carriage complaint against Cablevision. Tuesday was the deadline for supplemental trial briefs and written direct testimony in the complaint brought by GSN. Objections to Tuesday's filings are due June 12, with the hearing to begin July 7. Meanwhile, Chief Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel is considering a motion by Cablevision for summary judgment dismissing the complaint (see 1504300051).

Consumers Union is joining the opposition to the "effective competition" presumption in an FCC proposal on Section 111 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization Act of 2014, saying it was "surprised to see the FCC promote a regulation that would put even more power in the hands of large cable operators." There's scant evidence the cable universe is actually competitive, the consumer group said in a letter posted Tuesday in docket 15-53, saying the cost to consumers of pay TV "continues to outpace the rate of inflation." Many consumers don't have the option of direct broadcast satellite as an alternative, "nor does it provide all consumers with the high speed broadband options that are available from cable companies," Consumers Union said. Changing the presumption of effective competition could mean costlier cable services and more difficulty for local governments in negotiating consumer protections or in requiring cable service to an entire area instead of just the more profitable geographic sections, the Consumers Union said. The proposed Section 111 implementation, which would make cable companies exempt from rate regulation unless a local franchising authority challenged their status as facing effective competition, is opposed by many media companies (see 1506010026). Meanwhile, any implementation of Section 111 should be limited only to small cable operators, as that's clearly what Congress intended in STELAR, and it wasn't meant to change a cable company's obligation to show effective competition exists, NAB said in a related filing.

Univision Communications is pushing back against the FCC proposal to put in place Section 111 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization Act of 2014, saying the idea that cable systems will be assumed to be facing effective competition could mean "significant harm to Hispanic consumers." In a filing posted Monday in docket 15-53, the Hispanic-centric media company said it met with FCC top staff to discuss proposed Section 111 implementation, which would make cable companies exempt from rate regulation unless a local franchising authority challenged their status as facing effective competition. The idea is opposed by many broadcasters (see 1505150035). In its comments, Univision said its viewers "were especially vulnerable to being forced to pay more to get an additional tier if [multichannel video programming distributors] had the latitude of taking this vital programming out of the basic tier package. The result would be increased cable rates across the country for Hispanic households."

Broadband Internet issues -- not cable -- will be the focus of federal regulators reviewing the proposed Charter Communications buy of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, said former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth and Public Knowledge President Gene Kimmelman on the latest segment of C-SPAN's The Communicators. "It's going to get very serious review," Kimmelman said. "What happens to my cable bill? What happens to my broadband prices? Do I get better speeds? Will the Netflix, the Amazon [streaming video] products ... be more available or will this combined entity try to cut off my options? That'll be the big [regulatory] question. The cable company has an incentive to favor its own product." Furchtgott-Roth said much of the FCC and Justice Department analyses likely will involve local individual markets. "These are geographically distinct companies," Furchtgott-Roth said. "I'm not convinced they have greater market power collectively than they do individually. At least initially from the outside, it's very difficult to see that there will be substantial antitrust problems." The episode was to have been televised Saturday on C-SPAN and is scheduled for 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Monday on C-SPAN-2.

Adoption of the FCC proposal to make presence of cable effective competition a rebuttable presumption would reduce the costs incurred by the commission in addressing effective competition petitions and cable carrier costs in filing them, said the American Cable Association in a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday. “The benefits that would flow to consumers from the adoption of the Commission's proposal outweigh the hypothetical harms" suggested by opponents of the proposal, ACA said in docket 15-53. “Adoption of the Commission's proposal will enhance competition by leveling the regulatory playing field between cable operators and their less regulated competitors.”