Comcast Pans 'Expansive,' 'Harmful' FCC Set-Top Proposal

It took Comcast more than a hundred and fifty pages to tell the Federal Communications Commission everything it thought was wrong with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal to "unlock" multichannel video programming distributor set-top box info to third-party navigation devices. And that was a lot, including that it exceeds FCC authority, is illegal, will increase consumer costs, endangers content protection, jeopardizes security, facilitates piracy, weakens consumer privacy protections, and creates an unworkable standards-setting process. That came in Comcast’s expansive comments at the FCC. Even the summary is close to a dozen pages, but the takeaway is that the proposal will produce some of the most expansive MVPD regulations every proposed.

Rather than simply meting a statutory directive (Sec. 629 of the Telecommunications Act) to make sure navigation devices are commercially available, Comcast says, the FCC is forcing MVPDs to unbundle their service and "provide new Commission-mandated standardized Information Flows” for free to third parties so that the third parties can create their own separate, derivative services..." That, says Comcast, runs counter to the plain language of that statute, as well as prior court and FCC interpretations and the legislative history. That plain language and history, says Comcast, is that Congress wanted to promote the availability or retail equipment to access an MVPD's services over the MVPD's network.