CEA 2-Way Plug & Play Would Create ‘Quagmire,’ NCTA Says
CEA and allied CE and IT companies may claim a plan they back would speed retail sale of 2-way plug & play devices, but it really would mean an innovation-chilling govt. “quagmire,” violating Sec. 629 of the Communications Act, NCTA said in an ex parte filed at the agency. The proposal by CEA and the 12 companies reached the FCC Nov. 7 (CD Nov 9 p12).
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Cable originally sent a mixed message on CEA’s proposal, giving neither thumbs up or thumbs down in a statement it put out. But NCTA’s formal rebuttal was pure poke in the eye, blasting CEA as trying to “substitute government mandates for marketplace negotiations which are working to bring 2-way products to market right now.” In justifying its move, CEA cited 2-plus years of inter-industry talks that “have not yielded a mutual agreement on a bi-directional specification.” And a joint Nov. 29 CEA-NCTA progress report on the talks said the sides hadn’t even met since the last such report was filed in Sept.
The CE proposal backs OCAP as an option, but “we prefer a non-OCAP approach,” its supporters said: “A requirement to include OCAP in all retail devices would impose significant and unnecessary costs and design restrictions on interactive digital cable ready products.” That’s exactly what makes the proposal a non-starter, NCTA said: A marketplace OCAP approach cable and major CE companies devised “is bringing 2- way plug & play products to market now, much faster than any hypothetical approach could ever do.”
Far from a “compromise” between warring CE and cable factions, CEA’s measure “is a proposal for perhaps the most intrusive regulatory regime ever established,” NCTA said: “It would impose substantial costs on cable customers and cable operators alike, and yet be instantly archaic for both. It would create a regulatory quagmire for the Commission, the cable and CE industries and consumers.” There’s no way can it “be implemented in a timely manner,” NCTA said. And even if it could, that would “contravene” Sec. 629’s “directive” that the Commission avoid stifling new technologies and services, NCTA said.
The dozen CE and IT companies signing onto the proposal “want a free ride on the cable industry’s multibillion dollar investment in cable networks and services,” NCTA said. They are Dell, Hitachi, Intel, JVC, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sharp Labs, Sony, Toshiba and TTE. The proposal also “would force the cable industry to disassemble its services so CE companies can repackage cable’s offerings as their own for viewing on their devices,” NCTA said.
Cable’s “repeated refusal to allow a competitive retail market” for cable set-top boxes brings new meaning to the cable industry tagline, “Only Cable Can,” a CEA spokeswoman said, responding to NCTA’s ex parte. “In cable’s world, consumers would never have choice when it comes to cable equipment -- an effort by the cable companies to protect the ever-increasing monthly equipment rental fees they bleed from consumers. The losers in this monopoly are consumers and innovation.” NCTA “complains bitterly about the advent of equipment competition, and then seeks to use the regulatory process to delay implementation of the law,” she said. “Having proposed the CableCARD to promote a competitive equipment market, cable now argues that its successful delay of CableCARD implementation justifies elimination of set-top box competition. The latest red herring argument is that consumer equipment choice would jeopardize cable network security -- the exact same argument Ma Bell made to preserve its monopoly over the boring black phone.”