Craig seems to have a hard time understanding how TVE works, and why it layers
and artificial set of restrictions on a neutral Internet service.
First, TVE is not free, Craig. Its price is incorporated in the price you pay
for your legacy MVPD bundle(s).
Second, TVE available from different MVPDs is not identical. Its price, the
price you pay for the legacy bundles you pay for, varies among MVPDs, and it's
content depends not only on the exact bundle formulation, but also on whatever
*that* MVPD managed to negotiate the rights to send over IP. Not all MVPDs have
the same rights to transmit content as TVE, we have seen. Comcast seemed to be
ahead of the others, last article I saw on the subject.
Third, not all bundles are identical anyway. They might be similar, thanks to
the lack of real competition among MVPDs, but they aren't identical.
Which makes it inescapable that whatever TVE service you can get depends on
your home neighborhood, just like the rest of your MVPD choices. This is all
self-evident, and it should not need to be belabored.
The reason for the restrictions imposed on TVE is as a last-ditch attempt to
maintain the legacy MVPD local monopoly structure, in the Internet era.
Franchise agreements are an artifact which results from the underlying
technology. Franchise agreements obviously changed when DBS was introduced, so
there's no reason to pretend that in the Internet era, they cannot change
again, for TVE.
I am baffled why these points need to be repeated so many times.
Bert
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