FCC Chair ‘Exploring Options’ on New Streaming Regulations in Response to Congress

Video streamers and other edge providers are fighting a multi-front war in Washington lately, as Congress applies pressure on the Federal Communications Commission to apply good-faith negotiation rules to over-the-top content providers, as it does traditional video providers, and as hundreds of rural broadband providers and associations call on the agency to make edge providers contribute to broadband buildout subsidies. The FCC wrestled with the issue of how and whether to regulate the over-the-top delivery of TV programming networks. The issue is online video provider access to content —  MVPDs are subject to program access and carriage rules — and providing FCC-enforced access to vertically integrated programming to promote competition to traditional video. With the backing of broadcasters, who have been trying to get more money for their online content, including by pushing for an antitrust exemption from Congress to negotiate for aggregated news content, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) wrote FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel asking her to revive the inquiry, this time focused on good-faith negotiation rules related to edge provider aggregation of news content from print and broadcast sources. Even before Sen. Cantwell sent her letter to Chairwoman Rosenworcel, she and other top senators were sent a letter from hundreds of groups calling on Congress to require streamers and other edge content providers to pay into the Universal Service Fund (USF) that subsidizes advanced telecommunications buildouts in rural and other hard-to-reach areas. Currently, the fund depends on traditional landline phone service and its dwindling customer base, and broadband providers do not pay into the fund other than for their internet phone service offerings.