CEA Urges FCC To Spur Competitive Retail Market For Set-Top Boxes

20-Nov-00

If the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is serious about developing a robust commercial market for digital cable set-top navigation devices, the agency must immediately revise its rules and the market incentives available to cable operators, argued the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) in comments filed earlier this week with the FCC. The comments were filed in response to the Commission's Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding the commercial availability of navigation devices (CS Docket No. 97-80).In its filing, CEA argued that the current navigation devices rules have not fostered the intended development of a competitive commercial market in set-top navigation devices so that consumers can obtain these products from multiple sources. CEA noted that this goal is mandated by Section 629 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended. CEA pointed its finger squarely at the cable industry for dragging its feet in providing the essential information and standards that would allow manufacturers to develop and market devices competitive with those provided by cable companies.""Given the lack of technical specifications for a wide variety of services that are needed to support competition in the provision of navigation devices from independent manufacturers, CEA is convinced that the cable industry seems to have determined it has no responsibility to achieve a commercial market for navigation devices,"" said CEA. ""The FCC improperly entrusted the cable industry with the responsibility to adopt standards that would facilitate competition and consumer choice. This responsibility is not being met. The ultimate loser here is the American consumer.""CEA did note that the cable industry has made point-of-deployment modules available and has proceeded with the OpenCable process, allowing for the development of competitive devices, but added that the industry has pursued proprietary solutions for the delivery of digital cable services with much more ""vigor and focus.""""The result,"" wrote CEA, ""is that the deployment of proprietary, non-OpenCable compliant set-top boxes has been accelerated, threatening to foreclose the market for navigation devices before any independently-supplied devices can be designed or manufactured.""CEA urged the FCC to take three steps to spur the retail market for digital set-top devices. First, the Commission must take immediate action to open and expand the standards-setting process for navigation devices and make sure that the process produces meaningful results on a timely basis. As part of this effort, cable operators should disclose technical information for all new cable services so that all commercially available devices will be able to interoperate with these services.Second, the FCC should move up the date to end the distribution of devices with embedded security from 2005 to January 1, 2002. And third, the Commission must require the cable industry to remove the major barriers to the development of that commercial market - such as unfair and unreasonable licensing requirements - as soon as possible.""In order to ensure commercial availability of the full panoply of navigation devices,"" CEA said in conclusion, ""the Commission should consider adopting rules, consistent with our suggestions, that will compel the cable industry to remove barriers to achieving a retail market.""Source: CEA