Coming soon: The FCC chairman’s set-top box app

[Commentary] RIP, America’s robust video market. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has a plan for you and he doesn’t intend to let you refuse it. The week of Sept 5 the FCC released a fact sheet on Chairman Wheeler’s new plan to rid the world’s most vibrant video marketplace of set-top boxes, those devices that almost all cable TV customers choose to lease each month. His plan? Force creation of an app and a standard app license that would take over the video marketplace. What could be more innovative than government-directed software and business contracts?

Apps may be the future of video entertainment, but that does not mean that government should be making this choice. Often, economic regulation pits regulators against customers in determining industry direction. Only one will win: Either the customers will determine the future by deciding which products and services are worth buying, or the regulator will drive the future by coercing the industry into ignoring market signals. Given the unprecedented value customers have enjoyed from US tech and video markets, let’s hope the Wheeler-app doesn’t happen.

[Mark Jamison is the director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida]