Nothing in the recent CE filings at the FCC ’strengthens the case...

the issue at its Jan. 13 agenda meeting, NCTA disputed CE’s arguments point by point. Keeping the ban “goes well beyond the level of government intrusion in the marketplace that is necessary to ensure the commercial availability of navigation devices, especially now with the cable industry’s demonstrated support for CableCARD-enabled devices,” NCTA said. Over 140 unidirectional CableCARD-ready products are available from 11 CE manufacturers, and the number of CableCARDs deployed in the field has grown from zero to 10,000, “with the number rapidly escalating every week,” NCTA said. As with any new technology, “all parties expected some start- up problems” with CableCARDs, it said. On the CE side, problems have included firmware needing updates in the home, “odd arrangements of inputs,” and soldering irregularities making card insertion difficult. On the CableCARD side, “there also has been the occasional need for a firmware download,” or the occasional error by a customer service representative, NCTA said. But contrary to CE industry statements about the malfunctions’ seriousness, NCTA said “these are problems that are normal and are routinely corrected as they arise.” NCTA also disagreed with CE’s argument that keeping the integration ban will aid negotiations on a bi-directional plug-&-play solution. “It does not follow” that leaving the ban in place would create a new level of certainty in the talks or that they would gain impetus,” as CE has argued, NCTA said. “The simple fact is that those involved couldn’t possibly be working any harder than we already are to try to bring the discussion to a successful conclusion.”