Syracuse, N.Y. -- Regulators' move to kick Spectrum, the largest cable provider in New York, out of the state is an unprecedented action that could lead to a long court fight, industry analysts and observers say.

"This is pretty radical," said Aija Leiponen, a professor of applied economics and management at Cornell University. "I've never heard of such a thing. It's very drastic."

The New York State Public Service Commission voted 3-0 Friday to rescind its 2016 approval of Charter Communications' merger with Time Warner Cable and ordered the company to cease its operations in the state.

The commission said Charter, which operates cable television, broadband and telephone service under the Spectrum brand, has repeatedly failed to meet an important condition of the merger approval - extending its broadband internet service to unserved or underserved areas of the state.

The regulators also slapped Charter with a $1 million fine - on top of $2 million in fines that they have previously laid on the company for missing deadlines for extending its high-speed internet service to the state's less densely populated areas.

The commission ordered Charter to file a plan within 60 days for the "orderly transition" of its cable franchises throughout the state to another provider or providers.

Charter said it has met the commission's build-out requirements and suggested the commission's action was politically motivated. (Gov. Andrew Cuomo is running for re-election this year.) It's widely assumed the company will challenge the state's action in court.

"In the weeks leading up to an election, rhetoric often becomes politically charged," the company said in a statement. "But the fact is that Spectrum has extended the reach of our advanced broadband network to more than 86,000 New York homes and businesses since our merger agreement with the PSC."

Leiponen said the matter very likely could end up in a long court battle.

"I see legal ramifications, and they will take some time," she said. "I expect thorough and tedious negotiations between them, but I wouldn't rule out a major lawsuit."

Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said the commission may have taken such a drastic step to "give Spectrum a kick in the pants" to speed up its broadband build-out.

If the dispute winds up in court, a judge will have to decide whether the company really has failed to meet its obligations, he said. But even if the court sides with the commission on that point, it would not necessarily order Spectrum out of the state, he said.

"The court does have some leeway on what the remedy would be, and it could be just a fine," said Ghosh. "The court could order the company to expedite the expansion and fine it if it fails to do so. I would think the effort would be to get the company to move faster."

Jeff Kagan, an Atlanta-based telecommunications and wireless analyst, said the state and the company could avoid the time and expense of a years-long court fight by agreeing to have an impartial third party, such as an engineering firm, conduct an audit of the company's build-out progress.

"Obviously, if Charter hasn't met its obligations, they've got to correct it," he said. "But just saying you want to throw them out of the state makes no sense. If you're going to kick Charter out, who is going to take over? Charter is there, and I think you have to give them a chance to fix it."

Charter is the second largest cable company in the nation, behind only Comcast.

In New York, however, Charter is by far the largest, with more than 2 million subscribers in 1,150 communities, including the major Upstate metropolitan areas of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany, and the boroughs of Manhattan, Staten Island, Queens and parts of Brooklyn.

In approving Charter's merger with Time Warner Cable, the Public Service Commission required the company to extend its network to pass an additional 145,000 unserved or underserved homes and businesses in less populated areas of the state over the four years following the merger. The company was required to reach certain build-out milestones each of the four years, but the commission said it has fallen short in each of the first two years.

In January of this year, Charter filed a progress report, saying that it had extended its network to 42,889 homes and businesses, exceeding its required target of 36,771, by Dec. 16, 2017.

But in June, the commission disqualified 18,363 of the "passings," saying they were in areas, the majority of them in densely populated New York City, already served by Charter or another broadband provider. As a result, the commission said the company had again fallen well short of meeting its obligations.

Charter further angered the commission by continuing to publicly claim that it was meeting the requirements. On June 26, the commission accused the company of misleading consumers about the matter and filed a false advertising claim against the company with the Attorney General's office.

Editor's note: Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which has an ownership stake in Charter Communications Inc., is part of Advance Publications, owner of Advance Local. Advance Local owns Syracuse.com, NYUP.com and The Post-Standard.

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