Looks like the FCC is trying to use the broadband task force to accelerate the demise of a bunch of legacy businesses; broadcasters appear to be just one target that the task force has taken aim at.
In what may be the understatement of this new century the task force tells us: "Nearly every home has a television, and the FCC thinks that set-top boxes could eventually be a gateway for Internet services."
Ya think?If broadcasters are concerned about losing more of their precious beach front spectrum, imagine how the cable industry must feel about a potential FCC mandate to integrate Internet access into their set-top boxes.
This makes the creative destruction that Stuart Benjamin suggests, to bring about the demise of TV broadcasting, seem like a mercy killing versus a brutal murder. After all, broadcasting has been in decline for decades, while cable and DBS have become the 800 pound gorillas of content distribution.
Forcing cable to integrate broadband access into a STB actually makes a lot of sense, since the cable industry controls more than half of the wired broadband duopoly in the United States with the telcos, who are seeing the market for wired subscriber lines (POTS) rapidly disappear. Forcing cable to open the flood gates to potential Internet content distribution competitors could accelerate the transition from TV walled gardens to a true ala carte content distribution model.
Forcing DBS to integrate broadband into their boxes would almost certainly require the industry to partner with the telcos, as the use of DBS spectrum for satellite-based broadband simply does not work for a large number of subscribers. By the way the DBS industry now controls 29% of the MVPD market.
And the FCC is also targeting the rural telcos, who have been feasting at the Universal Service Fund table for decades. What blasphemy to suggest that a portion of this $7 billion a year fund be used to bring broadband (and IP telephony?) to rural America!
So take heart broadcasters... Apparently the FCC has a lot of big fish to fry. Regards Craig http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121603916.html?hpid=moreheadlines FCC issues proposals to meet national broadband planThe Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday unveiled a laundry list of proposals to meet a congressional mandate to give every U.S. home access to high-speed Internet service.
The recommendations, which come just two months before the agency must present its final national broadband plan to Congress, include revising a rural phone subsidy program, revamping the market for television set-top boxes and redirecting more airwaves to wireless services.
Many of the ideas were widely expected and have already angered different corners of the communications sector as well as public interest groups, which argue that the proposals don't do enough to encourage more competition in an industry dominated by AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.
One proposal floated by the agency's broadband task force calls for using money from the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes rural phone service, to pay for adding high-speed Internet capacity in remote and low-income regions of the country. The program raises about $7 billion annually from fees on long-distance phone service, and the idea of redirecting those funds has upset rural phone carriers, which have come to rely on the subsidies.
"It's tempting to kick the can further down the road," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, referring to the Universal Service Fund. "But for many reasons it's important to begin tackling these issues now. We must make sure that the fund fully supports the technology of today and tomorrow, not just the technology of the past."
The FCC also recommended allocating some airwaves from television broadcasters to wireless broadband to support the next generation of iPhones and BlackBerrys. That has upset broadcasters, which want those airwaves for mobile television services.
The agency also discussed revamping the television set-top box market, which has been slow to change and is dominated by a few players that work directly with cable and satellite providers to lease the boxes to customers. Nearly every home has a television, and the FCC thinks that set-top boxes could eventually be a gateway for Internet services.
In his report, Blair Levin, head of the FCC's broadband task force, raised the idea of forcing cable and satellite operators to supply low-cost set-top devices that would integrate broadband and video services. The cable industry supports the FCC's review of the set-top box market and says that electronics makers haven't done enough to produce better boxes.
Consumer advocate Marvin Ammori, a law professor at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, says that because most customers get their boxes directly from cable companies, it's the cable providers that essentially control the market for the devices.
"The idea for the cable industry is that they want everyone to go to their channel box and the platform they control because if content were to be available online in the way consumers want, they would cut their cable subscription," Ammori said.
Gigi Sohn, executive director of Public Knowledge, a public interest group, said she was disappointed that the FCC didn't propose giving smaller telecom firms easier access to lines owned by the dominant companies so that they can better compete.
"Reforming universal service and supporting municipal networks are worthwhile goals, but they would do nothing to reverse the slide caused by eight years of misbegotten telecommunications policies that have crippled the most meaningful broadband competition for consumers," Sohn said in a statement.
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