Powell Opposes AllVid Rules That High-Tech Companies Seek, in What Foes Call Defensive Move
Don’t impose video device interoperability rules on cable operators, because they and other multichannel video programming distributors are providing increasing amounts of content from pay-TV networks and other sources over IP to devices bought from firms besides MVPDs, said NCTA. Criticizing a request last month for a rulemaking from high-technology companies and makers of consumer electronics that seek interoperability rules (CD Jan 21 p12), NCTA CEO Michael Powell wrote FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who used to run that group. In what some CE officials told us they see as a possibly defensive move, Powell cited the array of content at last month’s CES that’s available on many devices and not just set-top boxes that receive encrypted cable content. Powell’s predecessor Kyle McSlarrow, who later went to work for NCTA’s biggest member, Comcast, sent a similar letter to then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski after the 2011 CES (http://bit.ly/1eYX6zS) (CD Jan 28/11 p5).
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The difference between 2011 and now is that the AllVid proceeding at the FCC has been less active in recent years, with less lobbying, and some see Wheeler as what an industry official described as a new sheriff in town. “In your remarks at CES, you noted how change is occurring so rapidly that regulators are better served by defining values to be protected rather than trying to prescribe the precise solution for technology or the market,” wrote Powell Wednesday to Wheeler in a letter posted Thursday to docket 10-91 (http://bit.ly/1b6gRu0). “If one were to believe the portrait painted recently by the so-called ‘All-Vid Tech Company Alliance,’ innovation and choice in video devices is so sparse that the Commission must prescribe one universal technical solution.” Powell cited the success of TiVo striking deals with half of the top-20 largest cable operators, and said “telco and satellite MVPDs are also making their services available on consumer-owned devices."
The counsel for the alliance and an executive at member-company TiVo criticized NCTA’s letter, saying interoperability rules are needed, while the American Cable Association and DirecTV told us they back NCTA’s opposition to any such regime. The alliance’s other members have included Best Buy, Google, Intel and Sony. The approach the alliance favors was shown to be hinder tech innovation, as “waiver and rulemaking battles” were necessary to eliminate a connector requirement for set-top boxes, while CableCARDs weren’t embraced by the market, wrote Powell.
Last year’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit decision overturning some FCC plug and play rules hasn’t hurt tech development, said Powell. The agency should “neither reinstate legacy plug and play rules from another era, nor seek to constrain today’s dynamic market with a replacement set of technology mandates,” he wrote. The D.C. Circuit’s decision reversing encoding rules spurred TiVo to ask the FCC to reinstate some of the rules, which the AllVid alliance, CEA and Public Knowledge also backed (CD Nov 19 p4). It was “wise” the FCC didn’t pursue in 2010 the AllVid alliance’s “prescriptive approach that was uniformly panned by program suppliers, cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors,” wrote Powell Wednesday.
Cable operators continue supporting CableCARDs, “but all of the exciting innovations” show how quickly the market is moving beyond the cards that separate security and navigation functions in set-top boxes, wrote Powell. “Multichannel providers need to serve many different types of consumers, and set-top boxes may not disappear entirely into the cloud; but the set-top form factor is becoming much smaller.” Cable operators are increasingly moving functions from subscriber homes and set-tops to their own networks in the cloud, as they improve user interfaces so that encrypted linear and other types of video like that in IP and what’s found online can be searched altogether, executives have said in our surveys (CD Oct 31 p6; Dec 24 p7). Powell finds it “remarkable” the AllVid alliance wants new technology mandates for MVPDs, he wrote. CE industry officials said they saw little new in his letter different than past communications from the association to the agency.
NCTA’s list of “partial implementations” of new tech and cable/CE deals “seems to make the alliance’s point, rather than refute it,” said the AllVid coalition’s lawyer, Robert Schwartz of Constantine Cannon, in an interview Thursday. TiVo “seeks a standard by which consumers can be guaranteed access to MVPD channels using the TiVo user interface” without a CableCARD, said General Counsel Matt Zinn. None of the approaches in Powell’s letter guarantees a retail device will deliver all MVPD content, work across providers and allow “those signals to be framed by a user experience different from the cable operator’s chosen” user interface, he said. “CableCARD does this for scheduled programming but, as NCTA points out, core MVPD services are moving on to IP technologies instead. Real device competition requires a successor common interface based on these IP technologies.”
DirecTV shares “NCTA’s position,” said a company spokesman. “Given the innovation occurring in the marketplace, there is no need for video device interoperability rules.” AT&T, Dish Network, USTelecom and Verizon had no comment. ACA agrees with the association “that there has been meaningful change in the market, and that a prescriptive regulatory approach is no longer appropriate,” said Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman. “As a first step, ACA recommends that the integration ban should be repealed.”