Cable Wrongly Blamed CE for CableCARD Ills, CEA Says
NCTA’s 46-page rebuttal last month at the FCC blaming CableCARD snafus squarely on CE makers for CableCARD-ready DTVs that hadn’t been sufficiently tested was based on “a number of premises that are factually or conceptually incorrect,” CEA told the Commission in a 15-page rejoinder filed Mon. CEA again urged the FCC to enforce its July 2007 integration ban deadline, arguing that “common reliance” was the “most effective way” to promote problem-free CablecCARD deployment.
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The NCTA letter had blasted CE’s “misinformation campaign” for alleging that cable has bungled CableCARD marketing, installations and technical support. The real root cause of most CableCARD headaches is “widespread and frequent problems” in CableCARD-ready DTVs arising from firmware, hardware or configuration “deficiencies” in those products from virtually every major CE maker that markets one, NCTA complained. Cable operators have spent significant time, money and resources responding to calls from irate customers, “only to find out the problem is caused by the TV receiver, not the CableCARD,” NCTA said.
But CEA said cable’s “systematic failures and omissions in training, implementation, and support” were responsible for CableCARD’s horror stories. Those “deficiencies” likely wouldn’t exist or be tolerated “in a regime of common reliance, in which cable operators themselves were obliged to rely on CableCARDS in a widespread and systematic way,” CEA said. CEA told the FCC much the same in a March report when it said major cable operators and their CableCARD vendors were partly or wholly to blame for the often disastrous consumer experiences with CableCARDs.
Though much of CEA’s rejoinder was confrontational, it also waved an olive branch. CE makers don’t deny -- “and do appreciate” -- the good faith “and in some cases the extraordinary efforts of some in the cable industry” to make CableCARD work, CEA said. It’s “primarily the system that’s broken,” CEA said; CableCARD deployment is an “ad hoc, trial and error system of support,” it said.
At the same time, “the notion that every CE manufacturer, in one of the world’s most competitive markets, has been negligent and has acted against its own commercial interests, is not logical,” CEA said. “What is logical, and makes sense, is that MSOs -- which NCTA admits have developed a negative commercial interest in supporting the present generation of competitive entrant products -- would set up their testing, support and training systems in accordance with their own commercial interests. It was in recognition of this possibility that the Commission ordered common reliance in the first place.”
Hitachi, TTE and Toshiba contributed comments backing CEA’s arguments that CE isn’t to blame for CableCARD’s ills. Hitachi called for the FCC to convene a “roundtable discussion” to resolve the finger-pointing. Hitachi believes consumers “would benefit” if cable and CE companies “engage in constructive dialog” about CableCARD’s disruptive issues, it told the Commission. “A critical component of any such discussions should be the fact that while CE companies are held to a ‘common reliance’ yardstick… there appears to be no such testing regime for cable head-end configuration and operation. It is worth studying the benefits that consumers, MSOs and CE companies alike would realize if an equivalent or comparable testing regime did exist for cable head-end configuration and operation.”