Charter appeals court loss, still claims it can’t be punished for slow speeds

Charter Communications is appealing a court ruling that said the ISP must face a lawsuit alleging the company falsely promised fast Internet speeds that Charter knew it could not deliver. Charter claims that federal regulations, including the recent repeal of net neutrality rules, preempts the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman against Charter and its Time Warner Cable (TWC) subsidiary in February 2017. The New York Supreme Court rejected Charter's motion to dismiss the case on February 16, but Charter is appealing the decision in a state appellate court. (Despite its name, the New York Supreme Court is not the state's highest court.)  Charter says the court "erred as a matter of law in denying Charter's motion to dismiss the complaint's allegations regarding actual broadband speeds, because those claims directly conflict with the FCC's regime for measuring and disclosing broadband speeds and are therefore preempted." Charter still disputes Schneiderman's allegations that TWC's claims of speeds "up to" a certain Mbps were misleading. The "up to" speed promises "are substantiated using the FCC's official methodology for defining and describing actual broadband speed and could not mislead a reasonable consumer," Charter wrote. In its appeal , Charter also claimed that the lawsuit's "allegations regarding TWC's subjective representations about its network" are just "non-actionable puffery."