BELLSOUTH OPPOSES DIRECTV ON BROADBAND ‘LOOPHOLE’ PETITION
BellSouth disagrees with a key argument in DirecTV’s reconsideration petition at the FCC on plug-&-play (CD Dec 30 p1), it told the FCC in comments filed Tues. BellSouth said the Commission’s decision to exempt encoding rules from content delivered over the Internet or to a cable modem or DSL network was “well-reasoned public policy.”
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DirecTV had argued that the exemption unfairly gave cable a competitive advantage because “it sets up an obvious loophole for cable operators to circumvent the encoding rules” because they can deliver video via cable modems. “The MVPD [multichannel video program distributor] industry segments most affected by the proposed encoding rules will be DBS providers and other MVPDs that do not offer cable modem or DSL services -- a perverse and discriminatory result,” DirecTV had argued in its petition.
But BellSouth -- which said it’s upgrading its local wired transmission network for DSL and other broadband technologies -- told the FCC there was no “objective evidence in the record” to support DirecTV’s claims. The Internet, and cable modem and DSL technologies, “present a multitude of technical and public policy issues that are unique to those video delivery systems” and “are not ripe for consideration by the Commission,” said BellSouth. It said its affiliates provide cable service in 14 franchise areas in Ala., Fla. and Ga. In a “strategic marketing alliance,” the company plans this year to begin offering DirecTV service to BellSouth residential customers.
BellSouth does support the 3 other main arguments in the DirecTV petition, it told the Commission: (1) It agrees FCC rules should provide certain minimum standards for TVs with IEEE-1394 interfaces -- although it, like DirecTV applauded the Commission for not making IEEE-1394 connectors a requirement. (2) BellSouth agrees CableLabs “is not the appropriate administrator” of changes in the DFAST license. As a “wholly owned affiliate of the largest cable operators,” CableLabs “plainly has the incentive and the ability to hinder or prevent entirely the use of DFAST technology by non-cable MVPDs and their manufacturers,” BellSouth said. (3) BellSouth said it “shares DirecTV’s concerns with respect to the exclusive, ‘back room'” negotiations between the cable and CE industries on “Phase I” unidirectional plug-&-play devices. It urged the FCC to “ensure” that DBS providers and other “significant non-incumbent MVPDs,” including BellSouth, were invited to participate in the multi-industry talks on “Phase II” bidirectional devices.
The CEA and NCTA, in separate filings with the Commission last week (CED Feb 23 p1), said they had heeded the FCC’s call to make the Phase II talks more inclusive. “Achieving true headend interactivity in Phase II devices while satisfying the concerns of many more interested parties is daunting, but it is an opportunity to which consumer electronics manufacturers and retailers have looked forward for decades,” the CEA said in joint comments with the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition. The CEA said the contentious issues it raised in earlier FCC filings about the testing at CableLabs of Phase I devices had been resolved in time for the first testing to begin last week. The NCTA said manufacturers had been invited to participate this year in “practice run” testing and lab time at CableLabs, where 5 testing events, called “test waves,” have been scheduled in 2004.