[opendtv] Re: Multichannel News: Comcast Slates Q3 Rollout of ‘Instant TV’
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2017 10:10:12 -0400
On Jul 29, 2017, at 6:54 PM, Manfredi, Albert E
<albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
It was not legacy thinking Bert. It was the kind of mischief the
FCC can get into thanks to the Title II decision. They were trying
to extend the mandate to unbundle MVPD STBs to defining and
regulating Internet connected TV devices.
Well, I don’t understand that logic, since Title II doesn't apply to the
walled in MVPD content part of the business.
Earth to Bert. The FCC has "stretched" its authority to regulate industries
that were not defined in the Communications Act of 1934, under the vague
"public interest" standard Congress legislated in 1934.
The FCC had NO AUTHORITY to regulate the CATV systems that started to pop up
around the country in the late '50s; systems that were built to extend the
reach of broadcasters. But the FCC used its "public interest" authority to put
its thumb on the cable industry for more than two decades. One chapter in The
Political Spectrum is entitled: Must Carry This, Shall Not Carry That.
Remember this quote:
The circularity of this argument bears note. Broadcasting was regulated
because spectrum was a “physically scarce” resource limited by nature. But
when “spectrum in a tube” promised (or threatened) to relax that scarcity,
the government was allowed to extend its powers to preserve the very
limitations that justified regulation in the first place. In Pool’s words,
the FCC put its “thumb on cable.”
From 1965 through 1970, the FCC aggressively discouraged the upstart rival by
imposing federal franchises and “anti-siphoning rules.” The agency imposed
arcane, detailed mandates, “assum[ ing] the characteristics of a central
planner,” banning CATV systems from featuring:
• movies that had been in theatrical release more than two years before the
cablecast;
• sporting events that had been telecast in the community on a
nonsubscription basis during the previous two years; and
• series programming of any type.
It was more than another decade before Cable was allowed to compete:
The order issued by the FCC in 1972 retained the patina of micromanagement.
Besen and Crandall commented, “The 1972 cable rules can only be described as
baroque.” But an important corner had been turned: some small obligations of
cable operators had been peeled off. Further reforms came in a 1974 order. In
1977, the federal courts overturned the FCC’s ability to regulate premium
programming such as HBO, launched in 1972. The deregulation wave of the Ford
and Carter years swept reforms farther along. By the end of 1980, federal
cable TV franchises had been abolished and content restrictions mostly
eliminated. “In less than twenty years,” Besen and Crandall wrote in 1981,
“the FCC has argued that no regulation of this new industry is required, then
regulated the industry . . . to preclude the development in any but the
smallest television markets, and, finally, appears to be moving to almost
total deregulation.” All that remained was for Congress to preempt rate
regulations imposed by local governments. That came via the Cable
Communications Policy Act of 1984.
In any event, this shift to IP distribution *of* walled-in content, i.e. an
IPTV options, makes that point moot. IPTV doesn't require any proprietary
STBs of any kind.
Correct. So why did the FCC use it's new Title II authority to start a
proceeding that would have set technical standards for these boxes, and a new
copyright regime that would have allowed them to regulate Internet OTT services?
There is a very good reason that out-of-footprint services are going
to be problematic moving forward...
That's why it will make sense to deal with third parties for this, as they do
already with CDNs.
Pay attention Bert. The big OTT services are moving away from CDNs, developing
their own server farms, and negotiating with the ISPs to co-locate edge
servers. That is EXACTLY what happened as a result of the Netflix/Comcast dust
up. Netflix abandoned the CDNs and contracted with Comcast to co-locate edge
servers.
I agree that the marketplace - not the FCC - should be allowed to manage
interconnection policy and rates.
And that's *why* a neutrality mandate is needed. Otherwise, as I've said many
times before, the local monopolies will find very good reasons, for their own
self-interests, to provide non-neutral service.
Perhaps. However, as I have said repeatedly, there are many ways to accomplish
this. Heavy handed FCC regulation is a huge step backwards. We need real
competition with light handed FTC oversight.
If ISPs were truly competitive, and easy top switch from one to another,
there wouldn't be an issue. People would deal with the one that gave them
what they wanted.
If you want real competitive alternatives to the current limited options, trust
the marketplace Bert. The history of FCC regulation suggests that the special
interests will be protected and customers will pay monopoly rates.
Regards
Craig
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