FCC Said to Be Considering New AllVid Approach

The FCC is considering a new approach to AllVid, potentially setting aside a plan that would have required pay-TV distributors to make available a video home gateway device capable of interacting with a wide array of consumer electronics products, industry officials said. They said the new approach being weighed by the Media Bureau would give pay-TV operators more flexibility in meeting the requirements of any AllVid rules, potentially allowing operators that deliver video in Internet Protocol to be compliant. Bureau staffers have been meeting with representatives from all sides of the issue to gather input on the new approach, industry officials said.

The bureau’s new tack means less hardware would be needed by cable operators, DBS providers and telco-TV companies to provide third parties like Google and TiVo with their channels so they can be seen directly on a range of devices, pay-TV executives said. They said pay-TV providers that transmit their linear programming using Internet Protocol would have the IP stream tapped into by a third party, which would then connect that programming to the CE device. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

The bureau’s new approach, not finalized, is a deviation from the AllVid rules proposed in the National Broadband Plan and in the notice of inquiry on the current proceeding, many industry officials said. It comes after the bureau delayed releasing the rulemaking notice as it heard about AllVid concerns from pay-TV providers and their programming suppliers (CED Jan 28 p4). In recent weeks, bureau officials have held what some industry officials described as listening sessions, where they discussed the new approach to AllVid with pay-TV and CE executives. “The Bureau indicated that it is continuing to refine its views on the AllVid Notice of Inquiry based on the significant feedback it is receiving,” Verizon said in a filing posted Tuesday to docket 10-91. It reported on executives’ meeting with Chief Bill Lake and other front-office bureau officials.

The bureau seems to want to ensure that content within cable channels isn’t separated out by CE companies as a result of any proposed AllVid rules, industry officials said. Some pay-TV companies have said in filings they fear the proposal could cause disaggregation of pay-TV programming services. The new approach, if adopted by the commission, would mean that each pay-TV provider that used IP to send its programming could have its own AllVid interface, industry officials said. They said subscription-video providers that didn’t use IP still might need to use gateway devices for CE companies’ products to connect to their systems.

It’s not clear whether the new approach addresses all the concerns of the pay-TV industry, officials said. At first impression, the new tack does seem to address at least some of the worries, they said. “There were insurmountable problems with the proposal in the NOI, so I think people are interested in hearing more about this new approach and seeing whether it suffers from the same problems,” said a communications attorney.

If the bureau has developed a new proposal for AllVid, it should publish it in a rulemaking notice, so debate over it can take place openly, said Julie Kearny, CEA vice president. “At this point there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes and ex parte communications going on,” she said. “We want to see the NPRM. Now.” The item wasn’t on the FCC’s tentative agenda for its April open meeting, so the earliest it can be expected is May, Kearney and others said. After that, there would be a comment and reply period before the bureau would go back to work on an order, industry officials said.

Some of the bureau’s interest has focused on remote user interfaces, an industry lawyer said. An RUI system would access data provided by a pay-TV provider’s proprietary device and then render it on a local CE device, the attorney said. Presumably, the technology from an alliance that promotes RUIs, called the RVU Alliance, would be allowed under what the bureau is looking to propose, “as would other competing proposals” for the interfaces, the lawyer said.