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."

Comments

Not around here

[SomeJoel]

"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.

Re:Not around here

[dgatwood]

It's a replacement for cable TV. It is not a full replacement for everything cable provides these days. Want Internet service? Hope you like 500ms latency.

Increasing competition?

[elashish14]

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....

Court of Appeals is fracking retarded.

[girlintraining]

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.

It is OK now, but watch out for the future

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

what about

[FudRucker]

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.

Real competition from FiOS

[punker]

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.