CEA and NCTA Want DOE to Pause Set-Top Box Energy Rulemaking
CEA and NCTA have asked the Department of Energy to pause a rulemaking process on energy standards for set-top boxes and instead allow multichannel video program distributors to police themselves, the trade groups said at a joint media briefing Monday. Davis Wright attorney Paul Glist, representing NCTA, said he believes DOE proposals (CD April 10 p19) on whether set-top boxes should be regulated and how they should be tested could be finalized soon. If so, they would be a “switch point” for the cable industry, he said. If the DOE continues with the rulemaking, it will invalidate a voluntary agreement (VA) on set-top box standards that’s already being followed industry-wide, and discourage other industries from working proactively on energy efficiency, “undermining the very thing the DOE wants to encourage,” he said. DOE and the National Resources Defense Council, which backed tighter standards on set-top boxes, didn’t comment.
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Glist said by policing itself through the VA, the MVPD industry can react more quickly to changes in technology, rather than having to go through an extended federal rulemaking process to make adjustments. “The DOE has considerably less flexibility than the industry,” said Glist. Since the VA, 70 percent of newly deployed set-top boxes include an energy efficient “light sleep” mode, and that MVPDs were also able to download a software package into existing set-top boxes that were already installed in homes to make them more energy efficient, said Glist. “That’s something a new law couldn’t do, affect devices already in the home."
Glist and CEA Vice President-Technology Policy Doug Johnson said the information released in the DOE’s previous public notices on set-top box energy efficiency shows that the department’s proposed energy standards and tests for set-tops won’t work correctly, and could impair the function of future devices. Johnson said that because set-top boxes are constantly in contact with a network and are generally leased by consumers rather than owned, they're unlike other appliances DOE regulates, and the agency’s normal methods of regulating energy efficiency for appliances won’t work. Glist said under the current proposal, the DOE would treat each different type of set-top box software as a different device, which he said isn’t practical.
Johnson said in other industries, companies banding together to regulate themselves has been encouraged and approved of by the DOE, but generally there are consumer or environmental advocacy groups involved as well. Glist said the NRDC, which has been pushing the set-top box regulation, “walked away” from the industry VA because they felt is didn’t specify long-term energy efficiency goals. “The DOE would probably like to see more involvement from the energy efficiency advocate community,” said Glist. He said the signatories to the VA were open to making adjustments to the agreement. “This is not a regulatory gambit,” said Glist. “We're not saying [to the DOE] ‘End your proceeding,’ just put it on hold and give this agreement a chance to work.”