FCC Backtracks on New AllVid Plan After Concerns Raised
The FCC is backtracking on an AllVid proposal it floated (CD March 24 p1) as an alternative to cable and telco-TV providers having to connect to consumer electronics, said agency and industry officials. They said the alternative to a gateway connector approach the Media Bureau floated in recent months, for pay-TV providers to let CE devices connect to their IP streams using application programming interfaces, appears dead. Lobbying by the CE industry against the plan and technical concerns within the bureau and possibly the office of Chairman Julius Genachowski sunk it, said commission officials and executives in the CE and pay-TV industries. AllVid aims to replace CableCARDs.
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The bureau hasn’t floated a new approach to replace the IP/API one, and it’s unclear if career commission staffers have figured out a new tack, said all commission and industry officials we asked. They noted the bureau had discussed the IP/API approach with pay-TV companies, who generally don’t want any AllVid rules, and CE companies eager to get them. Some CE interests continued to be concerned about the non-gateway approach, because each pay-TV company could come up with its own set of applications that would need to work with devices sold at retail, industry said. Pay-TV providers have said the IP/API approach is better than the gateway tack, but they still had concerns on CE devices stripping out content within cable channels.
The bureau’s plan of working out a compromise approach that could get some support from pay-TV companies and the CE industry, before staffers finish an AllVid rulemaking notice, didn’t come to fruition, commission and industry officials said. They said bureau officials have said privately they're still working on AllVid, and the issue appears to remain a priority for Genachowski (CD May 5 p7). It’s unclear whether the bureau will recommend he support a rulemaking containing only the gateway approach, also recommended in the National Broadband Plan, or continue seeking an additional solution to also propose that could garner wider support. A bureau spokeswoman had no comment.
The CE industry continues to want the FCC to issue the rulemaking, and is concerned about its “snail’s pace,” said Vice President Julie Kearney of the CEA. She said she hopes the apparent abandoning of the API/IP approach will help the bureau “move the ball forward” on AllVid. Other CE officials said they also look forward to a rulemaking because its issuance would require all lobbying meetings on AllVid to be publicly reported in ex parte filings. That’s not now required. An NCTA spokesman declined to comment on the proceeding. The AllVid Tech Company Alliance has been pushing for the FCC to issue AllVid rules, and hired the law and lobbying firm of Patton Boggs to represent it, a recent disclosure form filed with the House said. Former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Monica Desai, Media Bureau chief under Martin, and others were registered as lobbyists as part of the effort. The disclosure form listed Best Buy, Google, Intel, NagraVision, Sony and TiVo as part of the alliance.
The bureau still aims to finish a rulemaking proposal and send it to Genachowski’s office, so he can circulate it for a vote by commissioners, pay-TV and CE industry executives said. A solution letting DVRs and other home CE devices tap into pay-TV companies’ IP programming streams still could work, said a CE lawyer, but not in a plan that requires CE devices to use APIs from the content distributors to access their programming streams. Any rulemaking proposal is likely to contain the gateway idea, officials from the CE and pay-TV industries said: The question is what, if anything, is proposed as an alternative to using gateways.
"It seemed to me that the IP/API approach wasn’t the breakthrough” that the bureau “might have thought” initially, said a cable attorney: “It didn’t bring parties to the proceeding closer together.” A CE representative agreed. “All indications … that I've seen [are] they've concluded that that’s not as attractive as it might have been,” he said of the bureau promoting IP and APIs. “And all that leaves is what’s in the National Broadband Plan” in using gateways to make that connection, he said. “Whether they do something or not is another story, I suppose, but I don’t know that they have another alternative in front of them."
The problems coming up with a new plan show that technological advances occur faster than the government can act, said cable lawyer Christopher Redding of Dow Lohnes. “I don’t know that you can propose anything at this point” because “people are all over the map on this,” he said. “There are still some political issues that have to be resolved” by the bureau, including “who is going to be covered by this,” he added: That includes whether DBS providers are covered by AllVid rules, given that DirecTV and Dish Network don’t need to provide subscribers with CableCARDs.