The Federal Communications Commission just announced that it approved Charter's acquisitions of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks, allowing Charter to nearly quadruple in size.

Charter will face conditions designed to boost broadband competition and prevent harms to online video providers that compete against the cable companies' TV services. Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposed conditions were approved over opposition from Republican commissioners.

Charter just needs to tie up a few loose ends before completing the deal. The Department of Justice has proposed a settlement that will allow the merger to proceed, and approval from California state regulators could come in a vote on May 12. When announced last year, Charter expected the acquisitions to cost a combined $67.1 billion.

Charter has 6.8 million customers who subscribe to at least one of the company's TV, Internet, and phone services. Time Warner Cable has 16.1 million and Bright House has about 2.5 million. In all, the combined company will have about 25.4 million residential and business customers, second in the US to Comcast's 28 million. (The vast majority of these customers are residential.)

Together, Charter and Comcast may control 65 to 70 percent of the nation's 25Mbps-and-up broadband subscriptions and more than 40 percent of total home Internet connections.

Though Charter and Comcast are duking it out for the highest number of customers nationwide, that doesn't mean they're actually competing directly against each other. Back when Comcast unsuccessfully tried to buy TWC, a company executive acknowledged that big cable companies rarely bother to compete head to head in any city or town since it would be too expensive.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said his conditions will require Charter to compete. Charter will be required to bring high-speed broadband to an additional 2 million customer locations, of which 1 million "will be in competition with another high-speed broadband provider in the market served," Wheeler said when he proposed approval of the deal.

Other conditions proposed by the FCC and DOJ would prohibit the combined company from imposing data caps and overage fees on Internet customers, charging large online content providers for network interconnection, and stifling growth of online video by demanding restrictive clauses in contracts with programmers. The FCC did not release full details today, but most of the conditions are expected to remain in force for seven years. A requirement to provide low-cost Internet service to poor people for at least four years is also expected to be part of the final order.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge thanked FCC commissioners today and said the mergers will bring "greater competition, more consumer and OTT friendly broadband policies, broader access to affordable broadband, and added US jobs." The conditions, Rutledge said, "are largely extensions of the longstanding consumer friendly values and practices of our company, and based on the commitments we put forward during the review process."

Some consumer advocacy groups opposed the Charter deals. But the conditions imposed are good ones, advocacy group Public Knowledge said today.

"As part of the merger review process, Charter has agreed to a number of commitments that, if properly enforced, counter some of the worst harms associated with industry consolidation, and advance the public interest," the group said. "In particular, Charter has agreed to not impose broadband usage caps on its customers, to not charge interconnection fees to online video providers, to offer a low-cost standalone broadband product, and to abide by a Department of Justice framework designed to protect programmers from the outsized leverage it will now have in carriage deals, including restrictions on its ability to keep programming from being available on online platforms."

A coalition of advocacy groups called "Stop Mega Cable" tried to convince the FCC to block the merger entirely, but to no avail. The group exaggerated market share numbers but insisted that the newly expanded Charter would create a duopoly with Comcast that "threatens the future" of online video services and smaller cable TV providers.

Disclosure: Bright House is owned by the Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica. Advance/Newhouse would own 13 percent of Charter after the proposed transactions.