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FCC Chief To Unveil Revised Plan To Eliminate Cable Boxes (fortune.com)
The top U.S. communications regulator plans to unveil a revised plan to allow about 100 million pay TV subscribers to replace expensive set-top boxes with less-costly apps that provide access to television and video programs, Fortune reports. From the report: Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed in January opening the $20 billion cable and satellite TV set-top box market to new competitors and allow consumers to access multiple content providers from a single app or device. The plan, aimed at breaking the cable industry's long grip on the lucrative pay TV market and lowering prices for consumers, drew fierce opposition from TV and content providers, including AT&T, Comcast and Twenty-First Century Fox. The FCC has said Americans spend $20 billion a year to lease pay-TV boxes, or an average of $231 annually. Set-top box rental fees have jumped 185 percent since 1994, while the cost of TVs, computers and mobile phones has dropped 90 percent, the FCC has estimated. Update: 09/08 19:18 GMT by M :Tom Wheeler has just published the proposed laws at LATimes.
No way I want that embedded in the TV. The lifespan on a TV is too long to keep up with what's going on re: streaming and online services. Keep the TV as a relatively dumb monitor and keep the smarts on something external that can be updated more frequently at significantly less cost.
How about simply moving the Franchise agreements away from the last mile, and let consumers choose what service / company provides what they want/need?
We wouldn't need "regulators" to "regulate" that which should be free and open competition, rather than creating mroe regulations to fix what regulations (Franchise agreements) have already broken. The answer isn't more regulation, it is moving the problem so that regulation isn't required at all.
The problem is last mile. Currently there is no option for "last mile" other than government granted monopoly. FIX t that problem and all the other problems go a way. It isn't that hard to solve, just have to do it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If a cable company puts some wire down, they ought to be able to do whatever they want
No they shouldn't. Most cable companies are monopolies, either granted by the municipality, or a de-facto monopoly because no other company is going to incur the sunk cost of installing cable into what would then become a low-profit competitive market. The government has a legitimate interest in regulating monopolies, although it should probably be done through the FTC rather than the FCC.
The real solution is the get rid of the monopolies. When streets are trenched, a large (12") government owned conduit should be installed, and multiple fibers should be pre-installed inside it. These fibers can then be leased or sold to multiple competing companies, and any bonded company should be able to run additional cables through the conduit. This would drastically cut the cost of entering the market.
Our current system, of requiring each company to retrench, is as silly as requiring FedEx, UPS, etc to each build their own roads into each neighborhood.