Charter Communications has received Federal Communications Commission approval to acquire Cox Communications in a $34.5 billion deal that would make Charter the largest home Internet service provider in the United States, surpassing Comcast.
Charter currently serves 29.7 million residential and business Internet customers, compared to Comcast’s 31.26 million. Cox brings an additional 5.9 million Internet customers to the arrangement. The FCC granted its approval on Friday, though the merger still requires clearance from the Justice Department and sign-offs from several states, including California and New York.
Charter operates its Spectrum brand across 41 states, while Cox provides broadband and cable service in 18 states. The combined company would represent a significant consolidation in the American cable and broadband market.
Critics of the deal, including Public Knowledge, the Communications Workers of America, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Center for Accessible Technology, filed a petition to deny the merger in November 2025. Their central argument was that eliminating Cox as an independent operator would reduce the number of cable companies that serve as competitive reference points for one another. With fewer independent peers, the argument went, larger operators like Comcast could more readily align pricing decisions — a pattern sometimes called conscious parallelism — without any direct coordination.
The FCC rejected that reasoning. The commission noted that Charter and Cox operate in largely non-overlapping territories, meaning the two companies rarely compete directly against the same customers. Because cable franchises have historically been geographically separated, the FCC found the risk of pricing benchmarking to be limited. The commission also pointed to competition from fiber networks, fixed wireless, and satellite broadband providers as forces that would continue to exert meaningful pressure on cable pricing decisions. That competition, the FCC argued, would have a greater influence on rates than the loss of a single independent cable operator in a different territory.
The petition had cited research on the airline industry suggesting that certain mergers raised fares on non-overlapping routes as well as overlapping ones. The FCC did not find that parallel persuasive in the cable context, given the structural differences in how broadband territories are defined.
One area of friction involved California. The state’s Public Utilities Commission Public Advocates Office submitted a protest in September 2025, contending that Charter and Cox do in fact compete against each other directly in portions of their territories, contrary to claims made by the companies in the regulatory proceeding. The FCC’s order acknowledged this but ultimately did not find it sufficient to block the deal.
The approval also reflected the priorities of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. His commission has made the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs a condition of scrutiny for companies seeking regulatory approval. Charter sent a letter to Carr the day before the vote outlining steps it had taken to end DEI policies. The FCC’s press release described Charter’s commitments as “new safeguards to protect against DEI discrimination” and said the merger would support rural broadband expansion and lower prices.
The deal now moves to the Justice Department and state regulators, where additional conditions or challenges remain possible.
Photo by Teslariu Mihai on Unsplash
Source: Original reporting
