The Federal Communications Commission has approved the merger of America’s two largest cable providers, Charter Communications and Cox Communications. Charter announced its intention to acquire Cox for $34.5 billion in May 2025, with the specific plan to inherit Cox’s managed IT, commercial fiber and cloud businesses, while spinning off the company’s residential cable service into a subsidiary.
“By approving this deal, the FCC ensures a big win for Americans,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement. “This deal means jobs are coming back to America that were sent overseas. It means modern, high-speed networks will be built in more communities in rural America. And it means customers will get access to lower-priced plans. Additionally, this deal ensures protections against DEI discrimination.”
The FCC claims that Charter plans to invest “billions” to upgrade its network after the deal closes, leading to “faster broadband and lower prices.” The company’s “Rural Build Initiative” would also expand those improvements to rural states lacking persistent internet service, a project the FCC invested heavily in during the Biden administration but has backed off since President Donald Trump appointed Carr. The FCC also claims that Charter will onshore jobs currently handled off-shore by Cox employees and will commit to “new safeguards to protect against DEI discrimination,” which essentially amounts to hiring, recruiting, and promoting employees based on “skills, qualifications, and experience.”
While Carr’s FCC painting a rosy picture of Charter’s acquisition, history has provided numerous examples of mergers having adverse effects on jobs and pricing. For example, when T-Mobile merged with Sprint in 2020, the redundancies created led to a wave of layoffs at the carrier. And what’s interesting is that in 2018, shortly after Charter’s merger with Time Warner Cable was approved by the FCC, the company raised prices on its Spectrum service by more than $91 a year.
The FCC’s obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion as part of the deal is strange, if only because it seems out of step with the commission’s objective of maintaining fair competition in the telecommunications industry. However, it fits in with other mergers that the FCC has approved under CARES. Paramount’s acquisition of Skydance was approved in 2025 under the condition that it would not establish any DEI programs.
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