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.
