Six CE Companies, Google Form Alliance to Press FCC for AllVid Rulemaking

A prominent cable lawyer called the group’s contentions old news. Best Buy, Google, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Nagravision, SageTV, Sony and TiVo are the founding members of the group, they said in an FCC filing (http://xrl.us/biiybf). Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake has said the AllVid notice would be issued this quarter, one quarter after the National Broadband Plan envisioned, but some within and outside the agency say that date could slip a month or more as staffers try to write a proposal that deals with the technical reasons for MVPD opposition (CD Jan 28 p5). A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.

Arguments by the NCTA and others aligned with cable against AllVid rules as envisioned by the CE industry were challenged in the filing, and in interviews with executives whose companies are part of the alliance. They contend that, rather than the plethora of new over-the-top and other video devices unveiled at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show, such devices show the limits of what can be done without new rules to link video devices made by third parties to TV sets connected to an MVPD. Addressing a concern raised by cable operators and programmers, the CE companies said they don’t seek to disaggregate pay-TV content.

"The Alliance and its members also expressed their desire to work with MVPDs to deliver more and better technology solutions to video and broadband consumers,” the group said in a news release. The CEA is “pleased that the tech companies have made this a top priority,” said Vice President Julie Kearney. “We look forward to working closely with the alliance.” An NCTA spokesman declined to comment.

"It is time for products that find, render, and store” TV shows “to catch up with flexibility, convenience, and national portability that consumers have come to expect from ’smart’ digital products,” the alliance’s filing said. “Ad hoc, device-specific and proprietary approaches that can deliver some content that is also available as part of a multichannel offering from an MVPD are no substitute for the competition and innovation in devices that can actually receive and deliver MVPD offerings without the need for a leased, proprietary set-top box.”

The term over-the-top “discloses that it is a complement to, not a replacement for, competition in devices and programming,” the alliance said. That’s an argument Comcast made at the commission to win approval to buy control of NBC Universal, in that Internet video doesn’t directly compete with cable, with which the FCC agreed, it noted. “Despite some recent progress in making television smart and connected, unless the Commission pursues a gateway approach consumers will not have the sort of open and innovative competitive market to which they are entitled.” Pay-TV companies “who now urge that ’the marketplace will solve everything’ ignore most of their own linear programming, for the delivery of which they allocate amounts of bandwidth that are huge compared to the amount they allocate to the Internet,” the alliance said.

That alliance members Sony and TiVo have deals with cable operators to provide content in new ways shows “they don’t need the rule or the piece of hardware that they are talking about,” said veteran cable lawyer Paul Glist of Davis Wright, who’s been active on CableCARD and successor technologies. “The so-called alliance is really recycled talking points from the same players, and I don’t really see anything new here.” CE companies “can actually strike deals” for consumer choice in video viewing “and the real contracts at issue” have “proliferated in just the passage of a year,” Glist said. “I don’t think those guys can say ignore everything you've seen at CES.” The group doesn’t specifically say how contracts and many other matters will be dealt with, even if they don’t propose to disintermediate content, he said.

There’s been a “misunderstanding” of what’s at issue, with such concerns not justified by what is actually proposed by CE players, said TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn. “CE companies are not looking to disaggregate MVPD services,” he said. “The vision of the FCC and the vision that’s supported by the alliance is being able to integrate a variety of offerings, cable offerings, over-the-top offerings, into one device, with common search functionality, and that is something that the NCTA supposedly supports in their principles” on the subject, issued last year, Zinn said. “We think there’s a role for the FCC, multichannel video guys think there isn’t a role and the marketplace will solve everything. That’s really what it comes down to."

DirecTV and Dish Network have seemed more amenable to working with AllVid than cable operators, with the latter industry’s reticence concerning Nagravision, said Nagravision Vice President Robin Wilson. He cited DBS and cable operator filings. Satellite seems willing to engage and is less in need of AllVid rules “given that they are encumbered by the technical and physical constraints of their system” of one-way delivery of content to subscribers, he said. “They are at least making some efforts to allow some flexibility in the home,” Wilson added. “We're feeling reasonably confident that things will prevail with AllVid,” with the commission issuing the rulemaking notice, he said. “I get the feeling that this is not going to require much” for the rulemaking to be issued, he said, “but we didn’t want to take any chances that these misleading documents” from Cisco and the NCTA “were misunderstood.”