The New York Attorney General has filed suit against Charter Communications, alleging that the cable company has not delivered upon promised internet speeds in the New York service area acquired in its purchase of Time Warner Cable.
The lawsuit, filed in the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accused Charter's Spectrum unit of systematically defrauding at least 640,000 consumers since 2012, three years before Charter closed on TWC.
"The allegations in today's lawsuit confirm what many of you have long suspected. Spectrum-Time Warner has been ripping you off,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a morning news conference.
RELATED: Comcast faces huge court decision in $100M Washington state lawsuit
“We are disappointed that the NY Attorney General chose to file this lawsuit regarding Time Warner Cable’s broadband speed advertisements that occurred prior to Charter’s merger,” Charter said in a statement.
“Charter made significant commitments to New York State as part of our merger with Time Warner Cable in areas of network investment, broadband deployment and offerings, customer service and jobs,” the cable company added. “In addition, Charter was among the highest rated broadband providers in the 2016 FCC Broadband Report. Charter has already made substantial investments in the interest of upgrading the Time Warner Cable systems and delivering the best possible experience to customers. We will continue to invest in our business and deliver the highest quality services to our customers while we defend against these allegations involving Time Warner Cable practices.”
For its part, Schneiderman’s office claims Charter hasn’t moved fast enough to fix the problems it inherited from TWC.
Among the other allegations, the Attorney General said TWC provided older modems to 900,000 customers, knowing that they were incapable of delivering speeds necessary for applications like streaming video.