NCTA, CVCC Scrap Over DSTAC Reply Comment Deadlines

NCTA and members of the Consumer Video Choice Coalition are sparring in ex parte filings and interviews over whether the CVCC is now recommending downloadable security different from the one it recommended in the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee report. NCTA asked the FCC for an extension of the Nov. 9 deadline for reply comments (see 1510280070) to adjust its filings to what it says is a changing position by the CVCC, first in initial comments from the group's members and then in a recent ex parte filed by members Public Knowledge and Hauppauge.

“What they've done is a bait and switch and switch,” said NCTA General Counsel Neal Goldberg in an interview. But the submissions have not changed the CVCC's proposals from the DSTAC report, merely presenting them in a more digestible form, said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. NCTA and the multichannel video programming distributor interests are just seeking to slow down the DSTAC process, he said.

NCTA and the MVPD groups associated with the DSTAC have repeatedly said they don't believe the commission should act on the committee report, but FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler expressed the opposite view in a news conference after last week's FCC meeting. “I don't think that the Congress passed the legislation instructing us to take this action for the purpose of having an academic seminar,” Wheeler said, saying he anticipates something more coming out of the DSTAC process. That doesn't bode well for MVPD hopes that the FCC won't take further action, several industry officials told us.

“It's clear that the FCC and staff view the DSTAC as a mandate to take action,” Bergmayer said. “A bipartisan Congress directed the commission to complete a report and only a report,” said Goldberg. Though Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., offered an amendment to the Satellite Television Extension and Localization Reauthorization to require the FCC to issue an NPRM, that proposal was withdrawn and wasn't part of the final legislation.

The main difference between the CVCC-backed recommendations in the DSTAC report and their later filings is a requirement for an additional device alongside the set-top box, said Goldberg and Beyond Broadband Technology Director-Strategic Communications and Development Steve Effros, who also opposes the CVCC proposals. In the DSTAC report, CVCC backed allowing the translation functions performed by the additional device to possibly be performed in the cloud rather than by a physical device, Goldberg and Effros said. In the later filings, this option isn't present, and a physical device is required. Having to supply all those devices to MVPDs' customers is sure to be “burdensome” to MVPDs, Effros said.

The latest filings from CVCC members are an easier-to-understand description of the ideas already in the DSTAC report, “illustrating that this proposal can be readily implemented through references to recognized and widely implemented off-the-shelf technologies,” said Bergmayer in a filing Thursday. Even if they were different, NCTA isn't entitled to an extension, the filing said. “Ex parte filings from advocates do not create an obligation for the Commission to open up a new comment cycle,” Bergmayer said. NCTA and many of the entities that have stood with the MVPDs in previous DSTAC conflicts have a meeting with FCC this week to discuss the CVCC proposals, Goldberg said.