NCTA: Cable Act Regulations Are Now Relics

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association has told the Federal Communications Commission that a wealth of competition has spurred cable to provide more and better service. The bottom line of its message was that Congressional mandates in the 1992 Cable Act on rate regulation, program access, program carriage, leased access, PEG access, cable-ownership restrictions and more are now "relics of a bygone era" because competition has been "unquestionably" achieved. The previous 13 reports have been a "documentary history of the steady and irreversible growth of competition in the video marketplace," said NCTA, a pace that has only increased exponentially in the three years since the FCC put out its last report. The cable trade group pointed to the rise of DBS from no presence in 1993 to 29.2% in 2006, the growth of telco video, online video, home video, mobile video, and the potential of broadcast multicast channels.