FCC approves proposal to boost TV set-top box competition

Sorry, cable companies: The Federal Communication Commission on Thursday voted to “unlock the box”.

“By moving forward with a rulemaking, the Commission has taken an important step to unleash competition among devices used to access television programming by making it easy for people to access the TV they pay for on devices and through apps of their choice”, said John Bergmayer, a senior staff attorney at Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group. “Nothing in this proposal slows down or stops cable innovation”. And judging from the hyperbolic reaction by the cable industry and its allies, the FCC may be onto something. In the cable television space, companies lock users into hardware that isn’t as feature rich as some competitors.

“Let’s have the cable company say, ‘You want to pay me for my interface, because it does all of these things nobody else does, ‘ rather than, ‘You must pay me, ‘ ” Wheeler said. “The Commission’s divided action is flawed because it ignores the FCC’s own technical advisory committee report and instead puts the Commission’s thumb on the scale by endorsing a government-mandated technology solution”.

However, there’s opposition to the notion cable companies have a monopoly in this space.

And there could be unintended consequences: Minority broadcasters are concerned that opening up the cable box might mean that they lose revenues that support their programming. But isn’t that more of a threat to networks with a broad audience than to niche channels that attract a more specific demographic? Congress recognized the importance of a competitive marketplace and directed the commission to adopt rules that will ensure consumers will be able to use the device they prefer for accessing programming they’ve paid for. In essence, it would require cable operators to make three feeds available in a standardized format: their video programming (i.e., their channels), as well as information specifying the access and usage limits on the programming (e.g., what channels the customer is paying for, and whether a particular channel allows recording).

At the last minute, and over the best judgment of the FCC’s legal team, the FCC ceded to a petition from Google, which wanted the FCC to legally split the Internet effectively into different two halves, upstream communications traffic and downstream communications traffic, where the FCC would be responsible for utility regulation of the upstream communications traffic half of Internet service coming from the consumer to “edge providers” (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.), while the FTC apparently would be responsible for the downstream communications traffic half coming from the edge providers to the consumer.

“You deserve a break on your cable bill and a choice”, that’s the message from Wheeler on Thursday, pushing for more cable competition. In the typical home, viewers have to switch TV inputs and guides, in some cases multiple times, in order to see all their options. This could help create a more vibrant media system that would better serve communities of color – and give diverse content creators a better shot at connecting with their audiences. And giving consumers an alternative to the protective bubble that programmers and cable operators have constructed could, indeed, make it harder for some programmers to survive.

That was the stark assessment from Paul Glist, privacy expert and counsel to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, in a conference call following a divided FCC vote to “unlock” set-top data and share it with third parties as a way to spur competition for content navigation devices.