House Commerce GOP Counsel Skeptical of Need for AllVid Rules
CHICAGO -- Some House Commerce Committee members are skeptical of the need for AllVid rules the FCC has been aiming to propose, its Republican counsel said. The rulemaking notice being worked on by the commission doesn’t seem likely to be finished soon, said an aide to Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass. Both aides, who spoke at the Cable Show Tuesday, said an earlier panel demonstrated that cable operators and programmers are trying to make content more accessible to subscribers.
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It has been more than a year since the FCC laid out in the National Broadband Plan its AllVid vision for all pay-TV providers to connect to CE gear sold by retailers, without using CableCARDs, said Senior Vice President Tom Simmons of Midcontinent Communications, who moderated the Capitol Hill panel. The Media Bureau has been backtracking on an AllVid plan it floated earlier this year (CED May 24 p1) . A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment on the aides’ remarks.
The prospect of AllVid rules raises questions of whether they're necessary and feasible, said Neil Fried, the House Commerce Committee counsel, who works for its Republicans. “There’s a certain amount of skepticism if it’s necessary” among some on the committee, he said. The FCC seems to be having a hard time figuring out “if it’s feasible,” Fried said: “We don’t know what happens next” or if the commission’s approach to the issue again changes.
It’s not that consumer needs aren’t now being met by industry, but that they're evolving, Fried said of the earlier panel at the NCTA convention. “They're all competing to meet them as they develop.” That panel illustrates rules may not be necessary, said Danny Sepulveda, who works on telecom issues for Kerry. “I don’t see it as an issue we'll be dealing with” soon on the Hill, he said: “It’s up to the FCC” to see “if the market is meeting that goal” of video device competition, the aide said.
FCC flexibility in how to set up an incentive auction of spectrum the broadband plan seeks to reallocate from TV stations for mobile broadband was sought by both Hill aides. “We're going to try to find a balance to give the FCC the flexibility to design the auction,” Fried said. “But we are going to want some amount of security about what the outcome will be,” so that what broadcasters seek to be a voluntary opportunity to participate is indeed so, he said. The goal is to “to try to preserve as much flexibility within that as possible,” Fried said.
"There’s a general consensus that incentive auctions are a good idea,” Sepulveda said, and that the commission should have the “flexibility to use its expertise” in designing the auction. It’s important to ensure “that you have swaths of spectrum that are national enough in scope and wide enough to be used,” he continued. “There’s a growing consensus that you want to give the FCC as much flexibility as possible.” Fried said even if spectrum legislation isn’t passed this year, “it will have legs” in 2012.
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FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is “heartened” by cable industry efforts to move cable content to more devices, as displayed at the Cable Show and other venues, his aide Sherrese Smith said on a Wednesday panel at the Cable Show. “The industry has displayed a number of things that show it is moving toward a competitive retail market,” she said. “Our concern is that a lot of these things are at prototype stage, and we need to get things moving as soon as possible.”
Genachowski hopes to hear that industry on its own “is actually going to get them out to market rather quickly,” Smith said of new devices that can access various types of video. “If we get to where we wanted to be two years ago … that’s ultimately our goal” with looking at AllVid rules, she added. “These are things we are going to be assessing in the very, very near future.” Commissioner Mignon Clyburn “is open to any things that will achieve the goals of Section 629” of the Telecom Act, and of hearing from all sides on AllVid, her aide Dave Grimaldi said.