Five years ago this week… Charter’s merger with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks was approved by the FCC and the Justice Department. Critical to the approval was the FCC’s insistence that content players and OTT video were protected. Charter could not put a data cap on its customers for the following seven years, nor could it employ usage-based broadband pricing or charge interconnection fees, all of which had been used by Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to charge Netflix. Charter was also required to build out broadband access to 2 million US residents, at least 1 million of which were in areas sought by other US providers. Today, Charter is the US’ second-largest cable operator – behind Comcast –…