The FCC voted back in February to “unlock” your cable box. The idea is to create competition in a place where there has been only a monopoly—the cable-box on top your TV set (or on the shelf to the side).
One possibility is that new set-top boxes could combine online video sources with cable TV channels.
The proposal has been criticized by cable companies and Republicans. Critics say it would force cable companies to build new hardware and require customers to rent even more boxes. They also say the proposal would let third-party set-top box makers insert their own advertising into pay-TV content and undermine programming agreements between programmers and pay-TV companies.
A couple of days ago, 60 Republican congressional folk wrote a stern admonishment to the Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler.
The Federal Communications Commission's recently proposed rules on the Competitive Availability of Navigation Devices, if adopted, will jeopardize the incredible evolution of video distribution services enabled by generally reasonable regulation. Imposing new, onerous regulations on pay-TV providers would produce very few benefits for consumers, while potentially harming the viability of these providers. The particular obligations being considered by the FCC are all the more troubling because they would mandate compliance with technical standards that do not yet exist, injecting even greater uncertainty into the marketplace.
This, of course, is a lie. There is nothing in the FCC’s proposal that would force “compliance with technical standards that do not yet exist.” In fact, the FCC’s proposal only stipulates that cable companies cannot force people to only use their cable box top technology to broadcast their signal/content. This is a big problem of course, since the cable industry makes many billions of dollars forcing you to rent those boxes. And since they have had a monopoly all these years, they don’t really have any “innovative” ideas about much of anything.
The real problem is that with actual competition, these big cable companies are going to be in trouble. They have yet to figure out how to create a business model that deals with actual competition, and fair prices for consumers.