IPTV Providers To Pay Same Regulatory Fees As Cable Companies

An anonymous reader writes "The FCC is looking to put regulatory fees on a per-subscriber basis for IPTV providers. 'We will assess regulatory fees on Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) licensees and we will create a new fee category that will include both cable television and IPTV,' says the report. What services they consider IPTV is yet to be seen; they call it simply 'digital television delivered through a high speed Internet connection.' We can only hope it doesn't affect too many internet video sites. "

Comments

hmm?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is more for "broadcasting channel 2" by the ISP in a manner that would require a "TV tuner" and not "you must pay to watch youtube/hulu/netflix" of which the latter are subscription services that have no bearing on you watching it on DSL, Cable or Satellite.

Like, if a site like Hulu were to have a "channel" that is only available with a "TV" subscription then yes it should fall under this.

Re:hmm?

[pthisis]

No, they haven't. Read the FCC paper. The IPTV services they're discussing are essentially traditional cable services that use the Internet as their transport layer (e.g. AT&T ustream, CenturyLink Prism). They're clarifying that the exact technology used for regulated services doesn't create a loophole, not extending their regulation to Youtube or Hulu or Netflix (or ustream or justin.tv).

Re:I cuut the cable 5yrs ago

[pthisis]

Netflix isn't an IPTV service, none of this applies to them (or likely to any of the sites you're talking about). It's to ensure that AT&T uverse, CenturyLink Prism, and the like (which are essentially cable/fios systems that use the internet for transmission rather than purpose-built lines) don't have a regulatory loophole simply because they use a different technology for transport.

Re:What you can be sure it will include

[pthisis]

False. It includes only licensees, which are things like AT&T uverse and CenturyLink Prism. As they note in the paper, it's basically stuff that to the end-user looks exactly like cable ("[f]rom a customer's perspective, there is likely not much difference between IPTV and other video services, such as cable service") but happens to use the Internet for data transport rather than dedicated cable lines. It's not an extension to generic video streaming a la Netflix, Youtube, hulu, justin.tv, whatever.