FCC Chairman Scraps Plan To Promote Set-Top Box Competition

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 8:11 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] FCC Chairman Scraps Plan To Promote Set-Top Box
Competition
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


[Note:  This item comes from friend Mike Cheponis.  DLH]

FCC Chairman Scraps Plan To Promote Set-Top Box Competition
By David Lieberman
Jan 31 2017
<
http://deadline.com/2017/01/fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-scraps-plan-promote-set-top-box-competition-1201898265/
>

The FCC has good news this morning for cable and satellite companies, but
bad news for their subscribers who hate the set-top boxes they usually must
lease in order to watch TV.

The agency’s new chairman, Ajit Pai, has removed from its agenda
consideration of a proposal that would have made it possible for
independent manufacturers to sell boxes that could replace the ones
providers supply. The FCC says that 99% of subscribers pay an average of
$231 a year to lease the boxes, even well after they’ve covered the cost of
the devices.

Former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler led the charge for a rule that would have
required pay TV distributors to offer subscribers free, FCC-approved apps
that they could download to the device of their choice to watch programming.

Congress ordered the FCC in several laws to find a way to give subscribers
an alternative to the operator-provided boxes that unencrypt transmissions.
For example, a 2014 law governing satellite services told regulators to
come up with “a not unduly burdensome, uniform, and technology- and
platform neutral software-based downloadable security system” to provide
competition.

But opponents, including Pai, said that Wheeler’s proposal would interfere
with arrangements that networks make with distributors about advertising,
security, and channel placement, among other things.

The MPAA sided with cable and satellite companies, and cheered Pai’s
decision.

CEO Chris Dodd says that while “we support competition within the set-top
box market,” it should not come “at the expense of copyright policy or the
livelihoods of millions of American creators.”

Last year Pai said, in his objection to Wheeler’s proposal, that “the
Commission should focus on ways to ditch the set-top box and embrace the
video marketplace of the future.”

In September, Comcast said the proposed change would “stop the apps
revolution dead in its tracks by imposing an overly complicated government
licensing regime and heavy-handed regulation in a fast-moving technological
space.”

[snip]

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