Time Warner Cable said it has struck a long-term interconnection agreement with Cogent.

"Cogent and Time Warner Cable have entered into a long-term, bilateral interconnection agreement for their public IP networks," the companies said in a joint statement. "This agreement allows the exchange of Internet traffic in a scalable and reliable manner to accommodate the growing use of the Internet."

Charter Communications and Time Warner Cable are trying to get the FCC and Justice Department to approve their proposed merger and one of the issues the FCC is looking at is interconnection.

Charter has pledged settlement-free interconnection, a policy that would be extended to TWC systems if the deal were approved, though a TWC spokesperson had no comment on whether the Cogent deal was such a settlement-free deal. Cogent supports the merger, citing Charter's settlement-free peering policy, as does another major peering player, Netflix.

The FCC's Sept. 21 request for further information from TWC asked specifically for "a copy of all Internet interconnection agreements (and amendments), formal or informal, the company has entered into with any person (including CDNs, edge providers, Internet access service providers and Internet backbone services providers) that are currently in effect or entered into since January 1, 2013."

TWC can add its successful Cogent deal to that list, which could not hurt since complaints from network services providers and edge providers like Cogent, Level 3 and Netflix about interconnection deals are among the issues the FCC has been flagging in merger reviews.

The FCC has also made those complaints actionable under its new Title II-based network-neutrality regime.

New York -- Scott Schiller, NBCUniversal’s executive vice president, digital, advertising sales, closed out NewBay Media's 2015 Advanced Advertising here by disussing the programmer's focus on offering "a total audience solution" for prospective clients and partners.

In his keynote conversation with B&C business editor Jon Lafayette, the NBCU exec delineated the strategy centering on vertical portfolios broken up into lifestyle, entertainment, live content -- news and sports -- and Hispanic programming.

“We created a client solutions group to deal with top clients and [also] as an overall research organization. What we found was that we were able to have larger, more important conversations with clients and we’re in the throes of that right now,” Schiller said, pointing to the upfront on the horizon.  

This unified approach was put into gear after Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, which then had many separately functioning businesses.

“We sought out the integration of a system which will allow us to both offer a total approach to clients during and before negotiations so people can see schedules and understand what they’re buying,” said Schiller  “But at the same time it allows us to optimize schedules over time and on the fly.” 

NBCU is applying its all inclusive strategy to social, which Schiller believes will eventually mesh into one media buying group along with programmatic and mobile, to ad sales. “Clients want our content, but they also want to be able to take advantage of social platforms,” said Schiller  “We bring to the table packages that include the distribution of content from tweets and handles that we control, allowing us to market social media with the television content." 

The EVP also described CNBC’s move away from traditional measurement company saying, “what we found over time, working with Nielsen, was that their data didn’t necessarily articulate the audience that was there,” referring to mass viewing off of a single TV set in trading and news rooms. “So we went out and found a firm called Cogent, which is known on Wall Street as a diary-based mechanism for its accuracy… We’re not afraid to make those decisions because we think it shows the true value of our product.”