U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Monday once again paused its review of the proposed $45 billion merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable, citing delays in getting documents from Time Warner Cable.



The FCC is studying whether the merger, which would combine the two biggest U.S. cable companies, is in the public interest. It had self-imposed an informal 180-day countdown for the review, which will now be paused at day 104 until January 12.

The FCC said it learned this month that Time Warner Cable had improperly withheld more than 7,000 documents the regulators had requested, based on an "inappropriate claim of attorney-client privilege." The agency learned later that more than 31,000 requested documents were missing due to a vendor error.

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Time Warner Cable submitted the privileged documents in early December but expected to deliver a revised "privilege log" in mid-January. The FCC had asked the companies to respond to its data request by September 11.