Little Momentum Now at FCC for AllVid Rulemaking

Career commission staffers don’t seem poised to finish work on a rulemaking notice and circulate it for a vote by FCC members, agency officials said. The question then becomes how the FCC further improves CableCARD rules, given it may be some time before all MVPDs must connect to video devices sold by retailers, one said. And an AllVid advocate said it might be a while before the notice comes out, as an executive also seeking the rules expressed disappointment in the pace. The Media Bureau has effectively paused work in the proceeding, as Chief Bill Lake and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hope MVPDs strike additional programming deals to put content on more devices sold by third parties (CD June 23 p6). A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.

The “Internet has brought new options in program distribution,” said the AllVid Tech Company Alliance, CEA, Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition, New America Foundation, Media Access Project and Public Knowledge (http://xrl.us/bk3jvr). Yet “Congress’s prediction -- that competitive, innovative retail devices would be mostly locked out of MVPD markets -- has proven true,” the letter said. “Any retreat by the Commission, now, would come just as the private sector delivers standards-based tools to implement Section 629” of the Telecom Act, it said. The recent completion of Digital Living Network Alliance standards for commercial video makes this a good time to issue the rulemaking, the AllVid advocates said.

The rulemaking could reference DLNA’s standards and seek comment on them, the letter said. It was meant to be a response to NCTA’s letter last month on the new programming-device deals on display at the Cable Show, advocates said. An executive from Intel also visited the commission Thursday to press for the rulemaking, agency officials said. The executive declined to comment. Representatives of other AllVid alliance members Best Buy, Google, RadioShack and TiVo had no comment, nor did the CEA or CERC.

Instead of using the Cable Show as a reason to not enact AllVid rules, the advances shown in Chicago don’t amount to industrywide standards allowing Internet Protocol to be used to connect devices to MVPDs, the letter said. “Limiting a CE product to integrating ‘apps’ for a single MVPD will constrain both product innovation and facilities-based competition between and among MVPDs,” it said. NCTA’s letter shows companies giving pay-TV subscribers access to “some Internet video from selected partners, not ‘video content from the Internet’ generally,” the letter said. “A few MVPDs allow their customers to watch some video on an iPad app, but not a laptop, or using one video game console but not another. A competitive, standards-backed market would not suffer this fragmentation.” An NCTA spokesman declined to comment.

"It doesn’t appear that it’s the top priority now” at the FCC, Public Knowledge lawyer John Bergmayer said of the proceeding. “It’s almost a matter of the FCC has a lot of priorities that they're working on right now, and realistically we're not going to expect them to hop to on Section 629 right away,” he said. This letter “will at least keep the proceeding alive,” Bergmayer said. “We think that there needs to be standardization. That’s what’s worked in other electronic and communication markets.” He said the bureau could seek comment on some variation of the gateway connector approach a notice of inquiry and the FCC National Broadband Plan discussed, where such a device connects equipment like computers and DVRs to MVPD service.

Nagravision Vice President Robin Wilson is “disappointed” the rulemaking hasn’t been released, “but optimistic” it will be, he said. The company is a member of the AllVid alliance. “We were expecting something in the last six months,” Wilson said: There “clearly” remains a need for video device interoperability rules.