The FCC shouldn’t terminate Adams Cable Equipment’s CableCARD...
The FCC shouldn’t terminate Adams Cable Equipment’s CableCARD waiver for failing to file a timely status report, ACE said in a motion submitted with the late-filed report Thursday (http://bit.ly/1k2S74D) and posted in docket 97-80 Monday. “It would disserve the public…
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interest to terminate the waiver as a punishment for ACE’s late filing,” said the motion asking the FCC to accept the late report. The waiver, granted in July 2013 (CD July 30 p11), lets ACE offer its inventory of 50,000 set-tops directly to cable subscribers. It required ACE to submit an initial report within six months and 10 days of the first sale of integrated set-top boxes made based upon the waiver. ACE made its first sale in August, so the report should have been filed in February, ACE said. “The public has not been materially harmed by this omission because only a very small number of set-top boxes have been sold to cable operators under the waiver to date.” A report submitted with the motion said ACE has sold 850 integrated set-tops at wholesale to participating cable operators and 202 integrated set-tops to retail customers of those cable operators as of June 30. The retail boxes were sold for an average price of $53.35, the report said. “There is no countervailing harm to the public interest, as the small scale of these sales poses no threat to the cable industry’s common reliance on CableCARDs,” ACE said. “The waiver should not be terminated."