Deny RCN CableCARD Waiver, 2nd Subscriber Urges FCC
A 2nd prominent RCN subscriber in as many weeks has written the FCC to complain that his cable operator dropped the ball on CableCARDs and doesn’t deserve the CableCARD waiver it’s seeking.
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D.C. attorney Seth Greenstein wrote all 5 commissioners April 18 after buying an HDTV set and contacting RCN about what to hook up through its digital inputs. Greenstein, who represents CE and DTLA interests at the FCC, first asked for a CableCARD, he said. Like the earlier complainant, Harvard Business School Prof. David Yoffie (CD April 20 p7), he said he was told RCN was out of them and wasn’t sure when they would be back in stock. He then asked whether RCN had a set- top to lease him with an IEEE-1394 interface and was told it didn’t, he said.
Customer service reps offered to rent him a “regular” HD box at $9.95 a month, he said: “However, these boxes have only a component analog output and no digital outputs at all.” His 2nd option: Renting a DVR box for $17.95 from RCN that has component analog out and HDMI out. “I don’t want a DVR, and if I did want a DVR I would rather buy a TiVo than rent,” he said. “But I certainly don’t want to have to spend $17.95 just to have a digital output, when I should be entitled to get a CableCARD for only $1.50… If RCN cannot comply with the Commission’s regulations for customers who know what to ask for, I would be doubly concerned what they do with customers who do not know cheaper and higher-quality options even exist.”
RCN regrets that it couldn’t give Greenstein the CableCARDs he needed because it never likes to inconvenience a customer, Richard Ramlall, RCN senior vp-strategic & external affairs, told us in a written statement. But RCN was out of CableCARDs until a new supply arrived April 9 from Motorola, he said. The rest of Greenstein’s letter makes RCN think the CE industry “must be getting very worried the FCC will grant our limited waiver request if its representative needs to resort to testing our customer service department’s knowledge of international standards interface terminology,” Ramlall said. In fact, all Motorola HD set-top boxes that RCN leases “are fully compliant with these standards and include digital output ports and IEEE- 1394 interfaces,” he said.