Dish Accuses Charter of Trying to Sabotage Sling TV

Dish continues to try and convince regulators that Charter's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks will have negative repercussions for the streaming video industry. In the satellite TV company's latest filing with the FCC, Dish says Charter worked hard to discourage broadcasters for striking deals that would bring their content to Dish's over the top live streaming video service, Sling TV.

"Charter's laser-like focus on Sling TV shows that it views Sling TV as a serious competitive threat rather than a benign interest," reads Dish's filing with the FCC. The filing also makes references to "thinly veiled complaints to programmers" about making their programming available to Sling TV and other OTT providers.

"It also shows that Charter does not believe its broadband Internet customers are more important than its video subscribers; instead, Charter is focused on protecting its video subscriber base rather than enhancing the broadband Internet experience for its subscribers."

Outside of some vague claims that Charter's trying to hinder Sling TV's broadcast deals (something you'd assume is in every legacy cable executive DNA), Dish doesn't appear to offer much of substance in the complaint.

And Charter unsurprisingly denies that it's engaged in trying to hamper Internet video. In trying to get the deal approved by regulators, Charter has agreed to adhere to net neutrality for three years (whether or not the FCC's rules withstand court challenge). The company says it will also avoid imposing usage caps for the same amount of time.

"There is no more friendly broadband provider to (streaming video ops) including Sling than Charter," Charter claimed. "Charter's slowest speed is 60 Mbps, we have no data caps, no usage based billing, no contracts and no modem fees."