AllVid Proposal Again Debated in Basic Tier Encryption Proceeding
Cable operators told the FCC to resist CEA’s request to address its AllVid proposal and other home-networking issues before adopting rules to let cable operators encrypt their basic digital service tiers, reply comments filed with the commission this week show. “There is no justification for depriving consumers of the demonstrable benefits of the proposed rule pending resolution of other, more complex technological and standard-setting issues of interest to All-Vid proponents,” said Cablevision. Public interest groups even appear split with CEA on this point, Cablevision pointed out: While Public Knowledge and Media Access Project asked the commission to address AllVid, “they also recognize that the Commission should act swiftly to permit basic tier encryption,” Cablevision said. Delaying action on this item “pending resolution of the unrelated AllVid proceeding … would be inappropriate,” Time Warner Cable said. The MPAA also threw its support behind allowing basic tier encryption but didn’t address the AllVid rules in its reply comments.
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Comcast also asked the FCC to ignore CEA’s plea (CD Nov 30 p10) to take up other issues first. “The Consumer Electronics Association has no substantive objections to the rule change, but rather devotes its entire comment to discussing a long list of unrelated issues,” Comcast said in a footnote to its reply comments. “Its comments should be disregarded as completely outside the scope of this proceeding.” RCN took a similar position. “Whatever the merits of the CEA’s views on those other proceedings, such a position should carry no weight here."
AllVid proponents pushed back, saying the FCC should avoid piecemeal rules and regulations by waiver. “The commission should act on this rulemaking only in its larger context,” said the AllVid Technology Alliance. “The only technical avenue to accomplish this is an AllVid rulemaking,” it said.
The FCC should move ahead with an AllVid rulemaking at the same time it identifies a standard for IP-based home networking, the alliance said. “The FCC’s failure to proceed with an AllVid rulemaking has left waiver applicants, as well as MVPD subscribers, in uncertainty about the legal and competitive status of employing non QAM, non-CableCARD techniques” for home networking, the alliance said. That problem has been made worse by vague FCC requirements that MVPDs adopt “a” standard interface by Dec. 1, 2012 but not clarifying that such a standard be “actually designed to be nationally interoperable with consumers’ home networks,” the alliance said.
Requirements that cable operators offer free set-top boxes to basic tier subscribers for a period of time could be too costly for small cable operators, said the American Cable Association. The commission has appeared to consider that issue when it issued waivers from the ban on encrypting the basic tier in the past, it said, pointing to the different conditions the commission laid out for Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico. “The commission should conduct a similar evaluation in this industry-wide rulemaking and consider modifying the conditions that would be imposed on small cable operators in light of the disproportionate impact imposed on them by the proposed conditions as compared to the larger operators,” it said. Because smaller operators lack the capital resources of their larger peers, they typically contract with a third party to run the equipment that manages digital cable boxes on their system and pay a monthly per-box fee, the ACA said. Moreover, smaller operators typically pay more for the boxes in the first place because they aren’t buying nearly as many as larger operators, it said.