Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) has signed a long-term bilateral interconnection deal with Cogent Communications that will allow the two to exchange traffic. The two companies issued a statement confirming the deal.
Last week Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer hinted that a TWC deal was in negotiations when he spoke to investors at the Deutsche Bank 23rd Annual Leveraged Finance Conference. "We are in active negotiations with Time Warner Cable and CenturyLink and we believe we will get deals done based on the threat of litigation under the current regulatory rules," Schaeffer said.
Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR), which is in the midst of acquiring TWC, was anxious for TWC to get the interconnect deal with Cogent as this is one of the issues that the FCC was looking at when considering whether to approve the proposed $78.7 billion deal.
Charter has promised settlement-free interconnection and has said it would extent that policy to TWC if the merger was approved.
On Sept. 21 the FCC issued a request for further information from TWC and specifically asked for copies of all its Internet interconnection deals that are in effect or have been entered since Jan. 1, 2013. This includes CDNs, edge providers, ISPs and backbone service providers, the FCC said.
Cogent has been busy signing interconnect deals with various operators since the FCC's net neutrality rules went into effect earlier this year. In June the company signed deals with AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) with the goal of improving traffic exchange efficiency by adding more capacity and interconnection locations.
For more:
- see this statement
- see this Broadcasting & Cable article
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