NCTA’s ‘objections’ in its ex parte rebuttal to CEA’s Nov. 7 prop...

said in a reply filed Fri. at the Commission. “Most, if not all,” of NCTA misunderstandings “are capable of being resolved in a face- to-face meeting between the 2 sides,” CEA said. “The CE industry remains ready to engage in such discussions at any mutually convenient time and place. The status quo simply will not lead to the consumer choice envisioned by Section 629” of the Communications Act, CEA said: “This process must move forward.” CEA and NCTA told the FCC in their most recent regularly scheduled progress report Nov. 29 on the 2- way plug & play talks that the sides hadn’t met in over 2 months. Cable “of course” is ready “to engage in further discussions” with CE, “and to the extent any ‘misunderstandings’ can be resolved in such face-to-face meetings, the sooner they can be had the better,” an NCTA spokesman said. Even without meetings between the cable and CE business teams, their “tech teams” made “significant progress” in narrowing the differences between the sides, such as on resource-sharing in OCAP devices, the spokesman said: “But let there be no misunderstanding about why there have been no major meetings on 2-way issues in the recent past.” Cable had set an Aug. meeting date with CE, but was told “the CE side did not want to have a joint meeting and we should wait to hear from them about another meeting,” the spokesman said. “Apparently some CE companies were taken aback” by NCTA’s CableCARD waiver request at the Commission in Aug., the spokesman said. CE makers responded by walking away from the table, telling NCTA they're not sure there’s much that can be discussed rationally, he said: “Until that exchange, the 2 sides had tried to keep integration ban issues and 2-way issues separate. But CE’s thinking apparently was that if a waiver of the CableCARD requirement was granted, cable wouldn’t support 2-way CableCARD-enabled products.” He cited CE industry e-mails in which NCTA was told further talks would be pointless. Still, “we are ready to have discussions as we were then,” the spokesman said. CEA answered NCTA’s rebuttal in a 9-page, point-by-point rejoinder. For example, to NCTA’s argument that over a dozen CE makers, including LG, Panasonic and Samsung, have signed OCAP and CHILA licenses with CableLabs, CEA said: “Signing the only available license agreement should not be interpreted as tantamount to a policy position, or as exclusive of or inconsistent with improvements or other options.” Without mentioning them by name, CEA said Sony, Microsoft and Intel were among the 12 CE and IT companies signing on to its Nov. 7 proposal. “CEA believes that consumers are best served by variety and choice,” which its Nov. 7 proposal “aims to provide,” it said.