Level Playing Field for Cable Sought by Comcast, TWC Executives
The same application of rules to cable as to other industries was sought by two leading executives visiting Washington last week for NCTA’s annual convention. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts mentioned such rules in the context of customer privacy, while Time Warner Cable President Rob Marcus mentioned taxes and issues that also affect satellite. Speaking in separate interviews to have been shown this weekend on C-SPAN, the executives said moving functions from set-top boxes to the cloud, a theme of the Cable Show (CD June 12 p14) , will make it easier for subscribers to do things like search for shows and use apps and other products made by companies beyond the operators.
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C-SPAN might not exist if there were a la carte rules, Roberts said of legislation sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. “I don’t think that we would have the diversity of channels … if people literally would buy one channel at a time.” Many people find out about the channel by happening upon it, Roberts said on the nonprofit network’s The Communicators. “Should we have more packaging flexibility and options for consumers? That’s something we are hopeful” of and working toward, Roberts said. “This is best served in the business relationships and not in government laws and mandates."
The 1984 Cable Act had a privacy law for operators that was “way ahead of its time,” Roberts said of a law that he described as imposing stringent requirements on the industry. “There’s great comfort in that” the act governs privacy between subscribers and the company, he said. “You can opt out of” any information sharing with “one click” in a process Roberts said was easy. “It’s very important that we know what’s happening to our data.” The operator doesn’t “ever take it and do something about you. That’s not out business model. And so I think it’s an advantage to us” to remind customers of that, he continued. Such rules “should touch all industries more evenly” and be “the same for all of us as consumers,” Roberts said. Other cable executives have expressed similar sentiments in interviews (CD June 10 p1).
Time Warner Cable wants a regulatory “level playing field,” said Marcus. But “the video regulatory regime dates back really to the 1992 Cable Act,” and the world “has changed quite a bit” since then, he said. “We think it’s time to take a fresh look … on the overall regulatory landscape as it relates to video.” The operator doesn’t have “specific proposals” to make now, said Marcus. Asked about Verizon’s appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit of the FCC net neutrality order, he said such rules have import to Time Warner Cable’s business. “The fear always is that if we regulate our broadband business in a way that is inconsistent with further investment, that would do a tremendous disservice to our business” and consumers, Marcus said.
TV Everywhere technology, “there for the taking” to send streams of cable channel programming to Internet Protocol-connected devices, is “purely” an issue about getting programming rights to show the content outside a cable subscribers’ household, Marcus said. Inside home viewing is covered, he said. The authentication process for subscribers to access such TV Everywhere content on their devices “is something we are continually refining,” he said. For most devices, it’s a one-time-only login, said Marcus.
Time Warner Cable’s move to cloud-hosting and other developments means updates can be sent to customers “overnight, with the stroke of a couple of keys on a keyboard,” Marcus said. “In the past, we had to make a major software push to 15 million set-top boxes.” Also previously, “a lot of the cable software was proprietary to the cable industry,” he said. “By using standard language,” developments from companies other than his can reach subscribers, he said.
In the last year and a half, Comcast “sort of had an `aha’ moment” about moving away from set-tops, Roberts said. “All these years you had a cable box in your house, and the innovation is dependent on what the cable box could do.” Technology allows “us to move most of the brains of the box, like everything else in our society, to the cloud,” while sending programming and other information quickly to subscribers, Roberts said. “Our whole company culture has evolved to really trying to be technology, innovation, new products. There’s a buzz in the company and a vibe that I'm really proud of.”