After months of delays, Comcast now says government review of its proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable (TWC) will now stretch into the middle of 2015. When announcing the $45.2 billion deal 13 months ago, Comcast thought the merger would be a done deal by the end of 2014.

It's still not clear whether the federal government will approve the takeover, which would join the nation's two largest cable companies. There have been several delays at the Federal Communications Commission, with the latest coming this month.

"The FCC and the DOJ [Department of Justice] are continuing their regulatory reviews of the TWC transaction," Comcast Executive VP David Cohen wrote today. "Given the FCC's recent decision to pause the shot clock, we have recently reassessed the time frame when we expect the government's regulatory review to be completed and now expect that the review should be concluded in the middle of the year."

Both the Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV mergers have been delayed by disputes over FCC access to confidential programming contracts.

Besides federal review, Comcast is seeking approvals in states where licenses have to be transferred from Time Warner Cable, including New York and California. Comcast objected to some of the merger conditions proposed in California by an administrative law judge, and the California Public Utilities Commission has delayed a vote until May 7. The New York Public Service Commission has also delayed a vote several times, with the ruling now set for April 20.

Neither the FCC nor DOJ has said when it will make a decision.

Cohen lobbied for the deal this week in North Carolina, where Comcast would take over for TWC, promising speed upgrades. "[T]oday, over 90 percent of our customers subscribe to speeds of 25Mbps or higher, and over 50 percent receive 50Mbps or higher, while TWC’s flagship speed tier is only 15Mbps down," Cohen wrote. "[U]sing the FCC’s most recent data, over five times as many Comcast customers subscribe to speeds of 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream as compared to TWC customers. Comcast’s average Internet speed is just over 50Mbps down, two and a half times TWC’s average speed of 20.3Mbps down."

Residents of North Carolina have had trouble getting access to faster alternatives because of a state law that prevents municipal broadband providers from expanding outside their territories. Broadband providers have consistently advocated for such regulation at the state level, but the FCC last month voted to preempt those laws, saying they restricted competition. The FCC is already facing a lawsuit over that decision from Tennessee.