NCTA Seeks FCC Notice on Market for Video Devices
The cable industry wants the FCC to start an inquiry into the market for video devices that’s apart from an examination by broadband staff of CableCARDs and other devices sold by retailers that connect to pay-TV services. NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow made the request Friday in a letter to Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and Carlos Kirjner, senior broadband advisor to Chairman Julius Genachowski. It came a day after the Omnibus Broadband Initiative (OBI) issued a wide-ranging public notice asking whether a standard can be developed to let devices connect to all pay-TV providers, not just a single company’s service (CD Dec 4 p12).
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FCC members ought to vote on a notice of inquiry into the matter since it’s a complex subject that can’t be tackled in the short time remaining before the National Broadband Plan is due Feb. 17, NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg told us. Executives at CEA and Public Knowledge -- which had recently sought a commission rulemaking (CD Sept 18 p16) -- supported the request. “We look forward to reading NCTA’s comments and the comments of others,” an OBI spokesman said.
The NCTA’s letter, as well as previous requests from others, centers on Section 629 of the 1996 Telecom Act. “We agree that Section 629 has not met its stated goals since it was adopted in 1996,” McSlarrow wrote. “We agree that a fully-competitive retail navigation device market has not yet developed - despite the persistent efforts of the Commission, the cable industry, and consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers. Perhaps more important, even if a retail market had developed, it would have been based on a video landscape that no longer resembles the highly-competitive marketplace of today.”
The letter doesn’t represent a backing off from cable’s tru2way standard for interactive plug-and-play devices and comes after the NCTA has sought commission review of the rules for “some time,” Goldberg said. “The marketplace has moved on from the 1996 world of analog set-top boxes” made primarily by General Instrument and Scientific-Atlanta, now both part of larger CE companies, he said. But “there’s a hell of a lot of moving pieces” both technical and regulatory to be addressed before a rulemaking notice can be drafted, he said. “You need an inquiry to walk before you run.”
Public Knowledge prefers the FCC issue a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), while the CEA believes an inquiry is the minimum the commission should start now, their representatives said. “We think they could go right to a new rulemaking without needing to go to an NOI at this point,” said Legal Director Harold Feld of Public Knowledge. Still, he added, “I'm very pleased that NCTA is stepping up on this. NCTA could have reflexively dug in their heels the same way the broadcasters have reflexively dug in their heels on the spectrum issue” that was subject of another OBI notice last week.
It’s “high time for the commission to reassess whether the goals of Section 629 were being met,” something not done by the regulator since 2003, CEA Vice President Jamie Hedlund said. “At the very minimum, an NOI would be something we had wanted and thought that since the commission and the law require it, that these assessments take place as market conditions change.” The group “absolutely” supports a notice done outside the OBI’s reach, he added. “We would hope that if it didn’t start off as an NPRM, that it would move quickly to an NPRM.”
That may take time, said cable lawyer Steve Effros, investor in a company trying to develop a downloadable security video product. “I don’t think the commission is anywhere close to being able to write a new rule that would synthesize all of the technology that is floating around out there,” said Effros, who’s advising Beyond Broadband Technology. “This is very, very complicated. An NOI is likely to be a long process in itself. I don’t think we're anywhere close to a rulemaking, because what technology would you point to” as a solution?