NEW ORLEANS -- The cable industry would do well to make its services more portable and interactive, the better to compete with rampant free content, Sun Microsystems Chairman Scott McNealy said late Monday at the NCTA convention. “I would encourage the industry to sit down and look at” ways to let subscribers view more programming away from home, he said. “There’s not a lot of federated identity, which means there’s not a lot of ability to move from one screen to a different neighbor’s house,” McNealy said. “I want all of my stuff connected, and I want the service providers” to do it “so I don’t have to.”
NEW ORLEANS -- The FCC’s two Democrats think many more homes should have PCs in order to get broadband, and the government has a key role to play, they said at the NCTA show Monday. GOP Commissioner Robert McDowell said more must be done, but he’s wary of government mandates or the creation of an entitlement program. NTIA Acting Administrator Meredith Baker said broadband shouldn’t be regulated.
NEW ORLEANS -- Cable operators’ efforts to free for digital programming, video on demand, high definition networks and other products the bandwidth used by analog channels will speed up the next few years, executives said Sunday at the NCTA convention’s opening. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts sees the industry spending about $5 billion to “reclaim” about 250 MHz of bandwidth, he said in a keynote. That compares with $100 billion for systems nationwide to expand to 750 MHz from 500 MHz total capacity, he said.
Comcast lost an appeal Friday of a 2007 FCC refusal to waive CableCARD rules on its low-cost boxes that the company said stood to cost industry hundreds of millions. The decision at the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit said the cable operator can’t use as the basis of its appeal the argument that Media Bureau handling of its waiver requests was discriminatory or inconsistent with past FCC policies.
Five cable operators, CompTel, a state regulator and others want to lobby the FCC on a complaint that Verizon violated FCC porting rules. The proceeding involves allegations about actions by the Bell before moving a customer’s phone number to a new provider. The lobbying would depart from FCC practice and be inappropriate, Verizon said. The dispute is over whether those interested apart from formal parties may visit commissioners, their aides and Enforcement Bureau officials to weigh in on an action. Here, it’s the bureau’s April 11 recommended decision and the parties are the Bell and three cable operators. Verizon said it broke no rules, and the agency should say so and issue a notice on whether video and broadband customers can switch companies by having their new provider ask the old one to cut off service (CD April 15 p5).
The FCC hopes to let stations file digital signal maximization requests for broadcasting after the analog cutoff sooner than expected, agency officials told a Federal Communications Bar Association lunch at NAB Tuesday. The current window for maximization filings is slated to open in August, but may be “a good deal sooner than what we originally thought,” said Media Bureau Associate Chief Eloise Gore. A public notice will contain details, she noted, suggesting stations get information ready now to make the requests. Stations should file FCC Form 388 for the second quarter, disclosing DTV education efforts, on the CDBS system instead of ECFS, used for last quarter, she said. That will make it easier for the commission and broadcasters, said Gore. A public notice detailing procedures for those documents, due July 10, will be forthcoming, she said. Stations that missed the April 10 deadline to file Q1 reports got letters of admonishment, but not fines, from the Enforcement Bureau, she said.
TV stations hope FCC requirements that they provide it with a wider array of information on programming will be blocked by the Office of Management and Budget, said broadcast lawyers. NAB, state broadcast groups, Disney, Fox and others filed comments to the FCC late Monday saying the so-called enhanced disclosure rules run afoul of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The broadcasters hope that the OMB, which reviews all agencies’ documentation requirements, will decide the FCC’s rules run afoul of the act and block them, or that the agency will decide not to submit the rules to OMB for review and thus scuttle the rules, the lawyers said.
Studios are considering giving pay-TV providers movies farther in advance, a Friday FCC filing by the Motion Picture Association of America shows. Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros. want a permanent waiver of the commission’s one-way plug and play rules, to protect high definition moves from piracy, they said. Those studios represent the bulk of Hollywood output, said Leichtman Research President Bruce Leichtman.
Broadcasters in several markets aren’t participating in an early cutoff of analog signals in a test of digital TV, FCC and industry officials said. Wilmington, N.C., on Thursday became the first test market (CD May 9 p3). TV stations in six to 10 other cities were asked to take part in pilots by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, Commissioner Michael Copps and other commission officials, industry officials said.
Wilmington, N.C.’s PBS affiliate decided against cutting off its analog signal early in the nation’s first market test for digital TV, said Mayor Bill Saffo. A station spokesman cited public safety and technical reasons. Four commercial stations will take part in the test, in a market unique by many standards, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, broadcasters and Saffo officials announced Thursday.