Outcry Rises to Save Integration Ban, Prompting NCTA's Ire

Public Knowledge upped pressure on all senators to save the set-top box integration ban, contrary to NCTA’s wishes and prompting the association's ire. Public Knowledge led a letter, backed by Common Cause, Consumer Action, Free Press and the Parents Television Council, to all 100 senators asking them to ensure repeal of the integration ban doesn't proceed as part of Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization. “If some insist on including special interest provisions to pad the pockets of the cable industry in legislation designed to keep the government open, we urge you to reject such a cynical, anti-consumer move,” the groups told senators. “There is no reason to hold the workings of the government or the delivery of satellite service hostage to the cable industry's effort to expand their monopolistic stranglehold on consumers.” They backed either stripping the integration ban repeal language or replacing it with a provision offered by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., which calls for a successor standard before any repeal. Markey and, as of the last week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have objected to hotlining the STELA reauthorization proposal due to this provision, and Public Knowledge has told us that other senators privately have voiced concerns (see 1411040053). Hotlining is a procedure that allows bills to be voted on by unanimous consent. STELA expires Dec. 31, and reauthorization is considered must-pass legislation before then. The House already approved an integration appeal in its STELA reauthorization this summer. “Every U.S. senator should know that American consumers are watching them as they decide whether to maintain choice and competition in the set-top box marketplace,” PK Vice President-Government Affairs Chris Lewis said in a statement. “If this legislative giveaway to Comcast and the cable industry is allowed to pass, it will provide them with a virtual monopoly on set-top boxes and allow prices on box rentals to increase unchallenged.” NCTA and staffers for the proposal's author Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., have defended the provision as having bicameral, bipartisan support. The groups’ letter “once again completely ignores the clear consumer benefits that flow from eliminating an outdated technology mandate that wastes energy and adds unnecessary costs to leased set-top boxes,” NCTA’s spokesman replied. “The fact that PK’s latest characterization falls so wide of the mark can only be interpreted as a conscious decision to remain willfully blind to the significant changes that have occurred in the video marketplace over the last decade, to ignore the harmful impact of technology mandates on innovation incentives, and to brazenly deny the manifest injustice of a rule that saddles cable customers with leased devices -- and cable customers alone -- with added costs for no appreciable benefit.” He called the provision “common sense” and said that it does not “disturb the underlying legal obligation to support separable security in retail devices and does not alter the market incentives that drive providers to expand the availability of its services.”