The Emergence of Online Video: Is It The Future?

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing to consider the future of online video, explore the migration of viewing from traditional television to Internet and broadband-enabled video content, and examine the role that disruptive technologies play in facilitating this transition, and the business and legal models that foster the growth of this sector. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) started with a couple of questions: 1) How will the disruptive technology that online viewing provides lead to better content and more consumer choice? And 2) How do we harness this change for the power of consumers so we can get higher quality programming at lower rates?

As government strives to keep up with the broadband age, the Senate’s Commerce Committee held a hearing today covering the future of television, but midway through the hearing I realized that the Senate has it all wrong. The future of TV isn’t to be found in deregulation — it’s on the Internet. We just have to let it happen. And to do that, Congress needs to look at how broadband providers control access to content, through caps, specialized offerings and deals. Unfortunately, Congress didn’t do all of that. It danced around the problems of pipe owners also owning content providers and pay TV distribution businesses. It didn’t ask about caps on broadband and how that serves the interests of the pay TV business.

Amazon exec Paul Misener plans to tell Congress that while bandwidth pricing is OK, unreasonable caps are not and neither are specialized services that disadvantage competition.

As the audience for free television fades, federal regulators are wrestling over the future of the government-mandated broadcasts, which were originally intended to knit the nation’s disparate communities together.

The Senate is investigating video competition during a hearing on April 24 and public interest groups are using it as an opportunity to ask tough questions on broadband caps. Such caps, which are in place on over half of the wireline broadband connections in this country, are justified by the idea that they prevent folks from overusing shared broadband networks. However, most outsiders view such caps as a way for broadband providers to protect their existing pay TV products. So as the Senate gets ready to meet, Public Knowledge, Free Press, the New America Foundation and Consumers Union sent a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee asking it to quiz ISPs about their caps.