AT&T Concerned About Multicasting Mandates

AT&T CONCERNED ABOUT MULTICASTING MANDATES
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
AT&T is concerned that a requirement to carry multiple digital-broadcast signals in formats selected by TV stations would impose financial and technological burdens on its Internet-protocol-television service despite its abundant channel capacity. “It is AT&T’s belief that decisions affecting carriage of programming offered by local commercial broadcast stations should be subject to commercial discussions between content owners and video providers,” the company said in a June 9 Federal Communications Commission filing, adding that such discussions were taking place. The AT&T letter came as FCC chairman Kevin Martin is attempting to win support for rules that would permit each TV station to demand cable carriage of multiple programming services, up from just one service per stations under current rules. The agency could adopt the rules -- strongly opposed by the cable industry -- at its June 21 public meeting. For AT&T, FCC adoption of the rules would be a nonevent because the company repeated in the FCC letter its view that IPTV service is not a cable service within the meaning of federal law. Chairman Martin’s new must-carry rules at a minimum would apply to cable operators offering cable service. The tables could turn on AT&T because House and Senate bills designed to ease or eliminate local cable franchises would likely bring IPTV within the ambit of would-be FCC multicast must-carry rules -- an outcome not mentioned by AT&T in its letter to the commission.
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