- The FCC approved Charter’s $34.5B Cox acquisition after Charter joined other major U.S. telcos in dropping diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) practices
- FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez called Charter’s decision to eliminate DEI “shameful”
- Public Knowledge argued the merger would undermine broadband competition, but the FCC rejected the group’s claims
One of the largest cable consolidation deals has been approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which on Friday signed off on Charter Communications’ $34.5 billion acquisition of Cox.
Announced in May 2025, the Charter/Cox merger would see the combined companies reach at least 38 million customers across 41 states. Once the deal is finalized, the company will change its name to Cox Communications but retain Spectrum as the consumer-facing brand.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has cracked down on the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies of companies that seek merger approval, including Verizon/Frontier, AT&T’s acquisitions of Lumen and EchoStar spectrum and T-Mobile’s acquisitions of Lumos, Metronet and USCellular.
Charter joins in on dropping DEI
It was no different for Charter, which on February 26 informed the FCC that it ended its DEI policies, will not maintain workforce diversity targets and “eliminated optional inclusive leadership training and references to diversity and inclusion in the company’s internal and external messaging.”
Another stipulation of the deal is that Charter must onshore all of Cox’s overseas employees within 18 months, and the company must also offer Cox workers a minimum starting wage of $20/month.
“By approving this deal, the FCC ensures big wins for Americans,” said Carr in a statement. “This deal means that jobs are coming back to America that had been shipped overseas. It means that modern, high-speed networks will get built out in more communities across rural America. And it means that customers will get access to lower priced plans. On top of this, the deal enshrines protections against DEI discrimination.”
Despite the emphasis around creating more jobs, Charter laid off a decent chunk of its customer service employees prior to announcing the Cox merger. Then reports last October surfaced that the operator plans to let go of another 1,200 jobs. But Charter did snag former Frontier CEO Nick Jeffery as its new chief operating officer.
FCC’s Gomez, Public Knowledge oppose deal
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez slammed Charter’s decision to drop DEI.
“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) discrimination is a myth,” she posted on X. “It is shameful that any company would co-sign this lie.”
Public Knowledge, which had filed a petition to deny the merger alongside CWA, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and Center for Accessible Technology, argued the deal would undermine broadband competition and that consumers would ultimately pay the price.
John Bergmayer, legal director at Public Knowledge, said that unlike the case of Charter’s 2016 Time Warner Cable acquisition, the FCC did not impose any requirements for data caps, usage-based pricing and interconnection.
“When an agency treats every concern as ‘not transaction-specific’ and every voluntary promise as ‘firm and definite,’ merger review becomes a formality. Consumers, as always, will bear the costs of reduced competition,” he said in a statement.
The petitioners argued that while the transaction wouldn’t reduce broadband choice since the operators’ footprints don’t overlap, the combined company would have a “termination monopoly,” or a monopoly over delivering calls to its subscribers, and be incentivized to “manipulate its interconnection practices to extract fees from internet content providers . . . or degrade unaffiliated services,” per the FCC’s order approving the merger.
FCC: Charter/Cox won’t undermine broadband competition
The FCC rebuffed the argument by saying there’s no evidence either Charter or Cox “has attempted to charge to terminate traffic on their networks, nor have [the petitioners] rebutted the Applicants’ claim that they have never relied on paid interconnection arrangements.”
Further, the agency said cable broadband competition has increased since Charter’s Time Warner acquisition, noting “significant improvements” in fixed wireless access (FWA) and satellite broadband services.
“We find unpersuasive Petitioners’ argument that fiber providers are the only meaningful competitors to cable providers and that satellite and fixed wireless broadband services do not compete,” wrote the FCC.
Now that Charter and Cox secured federal approval, they must get the regulatory green light from states. If they face the obstacles Verizon/Frontier went through in California, full approval could take a while.
Read all of our coverage from Mobile World Congress 2026 in Barcelona here.