Dish, Big Carriers Say Cable Stifles Competition
Dish Network and the big two U.S. carriers continued to express concern about video competition. They made their views known in filings in an FCC inquiry to prepare a report to Congress on the subject. An early filing by a group representing small and rural telcos had raised fears that cable programmers will strike exclusive deals with large operators for online subscription video content (CD July 30 p7). Most filings Wednesday concentrated on linear-video competition. AT&T, Dish Network and Verizon said cable operators have plenty of incentive to keep programming to themselves. But the NCTA said prices have fallen as services bundles have multiplied, and competition has increased with telcos’ entry into pay TV.
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The Independent Film & Television Alliance pointed to Disney’s ESPN360.com subscription Web site and the TV Everywhere subscription project of Comcast and Time Warner as “troubling” signs that only a few “'go to’ sites with significant marketing and advertising support” are being created. “The economic incentives for Comcast to promote this service to the detriment of others it might carry cannot be discounted,” the group said. “That stage is being set for other aggregate content providers to follow suit and, through exclusive carriage deals, to ultimately create new distribution platforms to which independents will be denied equal access.”
Dish said the commission should closely monitor competition in mobile video and linear cable. “The most effective means for cable companies to thwart video competition remains limiting access to vertically integrated programming,” the company said. “The Commission should also ensure that the emerging mobile video market offers potential providers a level regulatory playing field with consistent technical and operating rules. The gatekeepers of the living room TV and the cell phone business should not be permitted to extend their reach to the nascent mobile video market.”
The NCTA said consumers continue to benefit from operators’ bundling of phone and broadband with video. As shown by a study the association paid for and released Wednesday (CD July 30 p12), “vigorous competition with telephone companies and others has resulted in enormous cost savings” and lower prices, it said. “The competitive offering of telephone service by cable operators has resulted in lower telephone costs for all consumers,” including those who don’t buy phone and video service from the same provider, the NCTA said. It added that “the bundled price is significantly lower than the combined price of much less robust cable, Internet access and telephone services a decade ago.”
Telcos and others said they fear that cable operators will use their dominant position in the video market to reduce competition. AT&T and Verizon said the commission should prevent cable operators from withholding from the telcos channels that the cable operators own. The carriers cited disputes with Cox (CD July 30 p12) and Cablevision. (See separate report in this issue.) “Incumbent cable operators continue to look for opportunities to handicap competitive video providers and frustrate meaningful competitive choices” for consumers, Verizon said. “The Commission can and should put an end to these tactics by ensuring that all competing providers have access to such ‘must have’ programming.” As AT&T has added pay-TV subscribers, “not surprisingly, incumbent cable operators have fought back with every weapon in their arsenal to stifle nascent wireline video competition,” the telco said. “The cable incumbents have offered no business justification for refusing to provide the regional sports programming at issue.”