Obama Urges Opening Cable TV Boxes To Competition (npr.org)

An anonymous reader writes: President Obama is publicly supporting the FCC's proposal to help viewers buy cable boxes to spur competition and help subscribers save money. Basically, the proposal would require TV channels to sell their content to third-party groups, like Google and others who would sell their own devices. The president's backing of the FCC proposal is part of a broader White House initiative to spur competition. In a Yahoo News interview, Obama compared the cable box issue to earlier moves by the government to open up the telephone system in the 1980's. Obama said, "Across the board, if we have more players who can potentially participate, fewer barriers to entry, the rules aren't rigged, then you get more people trying to get your business and you get better products at cheaper prices."

Comments

Gonna be hard to do this...

[rworne]

Just about every ISP is a media distributor as well. Don't have any draconian usage caps? This is one way to get slapped with them.

Hard to force them to open up the market with the lobbying they do. If the FCC succeeds and forces it to open, good luck when you start realizing your cap does not go very far when you add all that programming to your monthly bandwidth and the cable companies look get their profit in overage fees.