Slashdot Mirror
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."
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!
And I personally don't count DirecTV as an adequate "replacement" for cable.
Just curious, why not? Up here in Canada I have satellite tv. I could have cable for the roughly the same cost but I choose not to because like satellite better (for various small reasons).
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 count satellite as replacement for cable. When I got it, I could only get analog cable, for more than the cost of satellite, with fewer channels, and a stupid a/b switch. Digital cable was nearly double that. Larger companies and economies of scale means you pay more and get less? The only reason cable can compete is because the infrastructure is built into so many houses and apartments already.