Paul Gluckman

Sen. Ensign (R-Nev.) told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week that the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force he’s on will remain “vigilant” about resisting “the laws of so-called unintended consequences.” With the rapid pace of technology deployment and product innovation, “we need to be very careful that we do not pass laws that will unintentionally prohibit or discourage the next great innovation” now being developed “in the lab or in someone’s garage,” said Ensign, a Senate Commerce Committee member. “While many times we need to block legislation harmful to the technology industry,” legislation is urgently needed on “modernization” of U.S. communications laws, he said. Ensign said broadband legislation he introduced last summer would “get government out of the way of trying to micromanage competition in the communications marketplace. Instead, it will let consumers pick who the winners and losers are. It is totally unacceptable that the country that invented the Internet has fallen to 16th in the world in broadband deployment.” Modernizing the communications laws will help speed the entry of telephony firms into video delivery, which is “a critical step to spur the investment in broadband networks,” he said. Freeing the analog spectrum in the DTV transition “also is important for innovation, for it will allow the exciting new uses of spectrum, many of which will be developed by entrepreneurs,” he said.

The FCC was “arbitrary and capricious” last March when it reaffirmed a ban on cable deployment of integrated set-top-boxes without putting similar burdens on cable’s DBS rivals, Advance/Newhouse and Charter Communications said last week in a brief with the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C. The MSOs’ petition seeks to have the Commission’s integration ban order vacated.

CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro Tues. hailed a House-Senate DTV conference report, saying it vindicates CEA’s position that a hard 2009 analog cutoff would black out fewer households than predicted, since not many rely exclusively on over-the-air reception. “It’s nice to see that policy was based on facts,” Shapiro told our affiliate Consumer Electronics Daily. CEA didn’t push for or against a DTV converter subsidy, “but we advocated strongly that a hard deadline be set and the facts on TV set usage be considered,” Shapiro told us. Citing FCC data, the report said a Feb. 17, 2009, deadline would have “little impact” on most TV households. Cable and DBS households have “slowly but generally increased in recent years,” pointing toward an “even higher” proportion in 3 years, when analog service goes dark, the report said. A 2004 NAB prediction that many more blacked-out households was flawed, apparently because it failed to weigh projections on future DTV sales, or cable and DBS growth, the report said. The report faulted the Govt. Accountability Office (GAO) for endorsing NAB’s data without doing its own survey. Even so, an NAB spokesman said: “Regardless of the misinformation and bogus numbers provided by CEA during the entire DTV transition, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has testified that more than 20% of all homes are exclusively reliant on over the air television signals.” After analyzing the data, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told conference committee members the legislation’s converter-box program “is adequately funded to meet the projected demand for coupons, which CBO estimates to be approximately 20 million,” the report said. Even if NTIA -- charged with running the converter box program -- takes from the subsidy fund all administrative costs anticipated in the bill, the remainder still would cover more than 20 million $40 coupons good toward converter box purchases, the report said. And each $40 of the fund the NTIA doesn’t spend on administration “is another coupon it can make available to consumers,” it said.

In the “guerilla war” of aftermarket receiver sales, it’s “not accidental” XM is pushing retail price cuts in advance of Howard Stern’s Jan. 9 debut on rival Sirius, XM Chmn. Gary Parsons told the UBS Global Media Conference in N.Y. Wed.

With digital HD Radio having failed to gain mass- market traction years after its commercial introduction, CEOs of 8 of the top radio group owners gathered Tues. at a N.Y. news briefing to announce a strategic alliance to infuse the technology with cash and promotional power in a bid to take it mainstream.

Cable industry progress has been “rapid” in developing a downloadable conditional access system (DCAS) that can benefit MSOs, CE makers, retailers and consumers, the NCTA said in report the FCC had required. And although “considerable work” remains to be done “to perfect a commercially viable” DCAS, such a system is “feasible” and can be rolled out nationally by July 2008, NCTA said.

Differences overshadow agreements between the cable and CE industries on how best to deploy bidirectional CableCARDs. That was evident from reams of CEA and NCTA filings at the FCC Wed. One of the sharpest points of discord involves cable’s proposal for deployment of downloadable security, which cable committed in a separate report at the Commission to roll out nationally by July 1, 2008, in cable set-tops and in converter boxes to be sold at retail. CEA pledged it will continue to oppose any downloadable security proposal “that has the effect of delaying” the integration ban beyond July 1, 2007, the date set by the FCC in its last deadline extension.

CableLabs and NCTA executives met with FCC Media Bureau representatives Nov. 4 to rebut Verizon’s call for an “open standards-setting body” on 2-way plug & play specifications with a role for its FiOS mobile TV technology (CD Oct 25 p8), it was disclosed in an ex parte filing at the Commission. Contrary to Verizon’s plea that the FCC avoid locking into “cable-centric” standards for 2-way plug & play support, the cable industry’s use of DOCSIS “is an essential part of interactive cable communication and is already integrated in silicon for set-tops and DTV chips,” CableLabs and NCTA said. DOCSIS has made inexpensive cable modems possible, spurred direct cable competition with DSL, and become a worldwide ITU standard, cable told the Commission. Although Verizon takes issue with cable-centric standards, it has used “cable-initiated” specifications for many applications, CableLabs and NCTA said. Requiring multi-industry standards-setting “before innovation or market advances would significantly delay the development of competitive offerings to consumers and would open up the specification development process to political gaming -- such as efforts to hobble DOCSIS and competing home networks,” they said.

The FCC Tues. urged CE makers and retailers to “clearly label and identify the tuning capabilities of new TV sets” or use other means to inform consumers “whether or not specific models are able to receive” off-the-air DTV signals. The voluntary labeling directive appears in the newly released text of the Commission order advancing the final DTV tuner mandate deadline by 4 months to March 1, 2007 (CD Nov 4 p6). It is an “interim” step until mandatory-labeling proposals can be taken up as part of the FCC’s 2nd DTV Periodic Review, the FCC said, vowing to address labeling “expeditiously.”

IBiquity Digital’s next round of funding will be “a liquidity event, which we have always assumed would be an IPO” that would raise proceeds of $50-100 million to support the expansion of HD Radio, CEO Bob Struble told Harris Nesbitt’s Media & Entertainment investor conference in N.Y. Mon.