Documents Highlighted by Dish Don't Show Comcast/TWC as Threat to Competition, Comcast Says
Dish Network filings claiming to have uncovered “new evidence” that Comcast and Time Warner Cable are competitors doesn’t live up to its billing, Comcast said in a reply filing in docket 14-57 Monday. Dish had claimed that confidential documents submitted…
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by Comcast showed that the cable giant had examined starting its own out-of-footprint over-the-top (OTT) service that would have been in competition with TWC’s video customers. Those claims “founder on the rocks of logic and fact,” Comcast said. The internal documents that Dish mentions confirm that “while Comcast has reviewed the prospects of offering an OTT product, Comcast has consistently rejected its business viability and has concluded not to offer such a product,” Comcast said. “Consequently, there is no actual or potential horizontal competition between Comcast and TWC.” Even if Comcast or TWC were considering entering the OTT business, it wouldn’t necessarily put the two in competition with each other, Comcast said. “Given the proliferation of actual OVD [Online Video Distributor] competitors and potential OVDs, it is impossible to conclude that Comcast or TWC could be a uniquely important OTT competitor out of footprint,” Comcast said. The documents highlighted by Dish “only reinforce some of Applicants’ core public interest rationales for the transaction," Comcast said.