Seeking TWC merger approval, Charter makes net neutrality pledge promising not to implement data caps or usage-based billing for three years
Here's How Charter Will Commit to an Open Internet — The nation's network neutrality drama isn't over: the FCC's landmark rules are in court again …
Context & Ripple Effects
Charter is buying its way through merger review with policy concessions: a three-year pledge against data caps and usage-based billing lands while the FCC's landmark neutrality rules are back in court, giving Chairman Tom Wheeler a concrete condition to attach to approval. The play worked as a template — within weeks Netflix publicly endorsed the deal after Charter added a no-peering-fees pledge through 2018, and by March 2016 Wheeler was circulating a draft order approving Charter-TWC.
But the corpus also shows these pledges are only as durable as their enforcement: New York regulators later revoked their 2016 approval of the merged company over missed obligations, forcing a settlement with new broadband expansion terms nine months afterward.
First-order effects
- Charter's TWC subscribers are immediately shielded from data caps and usage-based billing for three years, and the pledge hands Wheeler's FCC a written commitment to cite when approving the merger.
- Content providers like Netflix get pricing certainty on both fronts — no consumer-facing caps and no interconnection charges — which is why they switched from opposing to supporting the deal.
Second-order effects
- Comcast, whose own merger conditions set the precedent Charter is now matching, faces pressure to keep its equivalent commitments visible as Charter positions itself as the more operator-friendly consolidator.
- The pledge raises the bar for any future broadband acquisition Charter pursues — its later Cox deal and California concession follow the same pay-with-conditions playbook.
Third-order effects
- Voluntary merger conditions become the de facto net neutrality regime once the FCC moves to repeal the rules in 2017 — Comcast, Charter, and NCTA explicitly vow not to block or throttle lawful traffic precisely because the formal rules are being dismantled.
- State regulators step into the enforcement vacuum: New York's willingness to revoke an already-granted federal-approved merger signals that open-internet promises will be policed at the state level when federal oversight recedes.
The trend: Broadband mergers are increasingly approved on voluntary open-internet pledges rather than binding rules, leaving carriers' commitments enforced by states and public opinion instead of the FCC.