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Court of Appeals Rejects FCC's Cable Subscriber Cap
olsmeister writes "The US Court of Appeals Friday threw out the FCC's cap on the number of cable subscribers one operator can serve, saying the FCC was 'derelict' in not giving DBS its due as a legitimate competitor. 'We agree with Comcast that the 30% subscriber limit is arbitrary and capricious. We therefore grant the petition and vacate the Rule,' said the court, which concluded that there was ample evidence of an increasingly competitive communications marketplace and that cable did not have undue control on the programming pipeline. The FCC commissioner's statement (PDF) is available online."
Think customer service is lousy now? Just wait until they add a few million more customers!
hahaha
"an increasingly competitive communications marketplace"
Where I live, there's only one cable company to choose from. They must be counting DirecTV and the like as "competition", because I've only once in my entire life had the ability to choose from two cable companies. And that didn't last long either, because the one I picked (the smaller, better one) got bought out by the large, crappier one after about a year. And I personally don't count DirecTV as an adequate "replacement" for cable.
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Reminds me of the uproar over Comcast disconnecting users with excessive bandwidth usage, except here we went from clear, obvious limit to unclear, ill-specified limit.
Instead of a fixed limit of 30% now there will be an arbitrary install base beyond which comcast becomes liable to antitrust investigations.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Since the 1980's the cable companies have had few places where operators' territories overlapped each other and have banded together in efforts like CableLabs. They are in fact a quasi-monopoly in the U.S. Will this end that monopoly?
. . . concluded that there was ample evidence of an increasingly competitive communications marketplace and that cable did not have undue control on the programming pipeline.
I just crapped my pants, but I'm not sure if it was from laughter or fear.
Not a typewriter
The Appeals court was focusing on competition in TV space only. Obviously there is a lot of competition there.
The real problem with cable is not tv, but internet. I'm not looking forward to TWC being bought out by Comcast. I like TWC internet just fine in NYC. Comcast internet service... I hate with a passion.
One very likely explanation is that Comcast paid off the judges or researchers for the court of appeals. Ah well, the american court system is open to the highest bidders and the vanilla consumer isn't that.
Then why do the courts not force cable companies to share their lines with competitors? (Maybe that decision was exclusive to internet?)
We dumped Comcast years ago because they would raise their rates arbitrarily and with no limit. And yet the courts have this delusion that their is competition - then why are they allowed to do this? Sure....
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
It's good not to limit how many people can connect to the fastest last mile infrastructure avaliable to them. As long as cable is required to push %30 of data pertaining to developing newer last mile infrastructures. God's will- it cannot be undone!
Congress clearly empowered---in fact required---the FCC to set subscriber caps on cable operators in the Cable Act (1992). The court striking down these limits appears to be engaging in legislative policy analysis that is Congress's purview, not the D.C. Circuit's. It may be true that non-cable competition, such as from DirecTV, means that horizontal ownership limits within the cable industry itself are no longer as necessary to maintain overall competition as they were in 1992. But that's a decision for Congress, not the D.C. Circuit, to make.
I mean the court pretty brazenly admits as much. From the decision:
What they appear to have failed to explain is how the fact that circumstances have changed since Congress passed the 1992 Act, so that the factors that "concerned the Congress in 1992" arguably no longer apply, ought to make any difference as far as the court's job is concerned. Regardless of whether the factors that concerned the Congress in 1992 still apply, the Act remains in force until repealed or amended, and the D.C. Circuit is not empowered to repeal or amend it. Ignoring the text of the statute and substituting this sort of policy analysis --- "we're pretty sure Congress intended to do something with this act that no longer applies, so we're going to assume Congress would've wanted it amended, and we'll just go ahead and amend it right now" --- is lawless judicial activism at its worst.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Since when does a dialup modem hung off the side of a satellite dish constitute "competition"? Seriously, I want to go up to this judge and ask "Are you from the past?" This is like saying that a Ford Festiva competes with a [insert sports car guys drool over here]!
* Yes, my knowledge of cars is limited... I drive a purple Saturn. That is as much as I know about the car. But Slashdot loves car analogies, so work with me here.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Today with phone companies cable companies and DBS offering TV there is adequate competition. But in the future, with Verizon investing so much of money in getting fiber to premises, essentially others wont be able to compete in the future. We are looking at de facto monopoly. Given that TV and internet are converging into one, this would prove to be a big issue in the future.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
when cable broadband oversells their service and they have more customers than their system can handle? i guess they can do that all they want now?
well look at the bright side of this economic recession = less people can afford broadband internet so there is more broadband to go around.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Full text of the case, Comcast Corporation v. FCC, available here: http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/common/opinions/200908/08-1114-1203454.pdf. The case was heard by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Douglas Ginsburg wrote the opinion, joined by Brett Kavanaugh and Raymond Randolph.
No statement is true, not even this one.
I just crapped my pants, but I'm not sure if it was from laughter or fear.
The headline says "...Rejects FCC's Cable Subscriber Cap".
It's "Subscriber Cap", not "Subscriber Crap".
(Yeesh!)
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I so want to get out of comcast. Is really slow for browsing, gaming, netflix etc. The cherry on top is that they now they enforce their own "non existent web address" page, and if you would like to opt out you have to provide them your mac address. Sounds wonderful.
I think rules like this from the FCC are the least of comcast's worries. After a year of crappy quality service from Comcast, I switched to FiOS from Verizon (it wasn't available where I live when I first signed up for Comcast). For the same price, I now get dramatically better internet service (5/2 Mbps down/up). What I was really surprised by was how much better the television service is. The channels are much clearer, and I get a ton of good channels in the base package. The guide works much better as well.
If AT&T's uverse is on the same level, then I would expect the cable companies are facing real competition from the traditional telcos.
not exactly on topic but the fios ride may be over in favor of 4g, trials are getting underway, results of which will determine if fios will be expanded much further. there is a rumor of a 4g wireless set top box that will be a self install similar to what they do with dsl and fios stb adds
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
No, it means there will be THE cable company, kind of like Ma Bell was THE phone company. This is just setting TV up for a repeat of the Clearchannel effect.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
New York City is a pretty big market by most counts, however in most of the city Time Warner is your ONLY choice for cable service. On top of that, most apartment buildings don't allow for the installation of satellite dishes, so Direct TV and Dish Networks are both out as options.
The cable industry thinks this is a victory. It is for them, it's a huge loss for consumers.
Cable companies aren't forced to enhance their infrastructure to handle the extra subscribers, so consumers get lower quality service.
The subscriber cap was meant to preserve the quality of service for consumers. Now there is no recourse.
They're using their grammar skills there.
How about demonopolizing the infrastructure.
The guys who owns the physical lines to the apartments or buildings has to be separate from the content providers.
As a car analogy;
You would only have one road to your place.
But that road can have equal fees for anybody who wants to use them.
Be they taxi-drivers, bus-drivers or whatnot.
They all pay the same for the same service and the customer gets to choose which provider they want.
Just not the road.
Hoorah! Less government control is BEST!
Impeach all democrats - they are marxists!
Deport all illegal aliens - they are criminals as soon as they cross the border! No amnesty for criminals!
Remove the czars and presidential advisors - they are marxists!