Boxee Finds Faults with Basic Tier Commitments from Top Six Cable Operators
Boxee faulted a proposal contained in a letter last week from the six largest cable operators for dealing with third-party Clear QAM-reliant devices if the operators are allowed to encrypt their basic service tiers. Boxee’s lobbying efforts have slowed adoption of an order that would let cable operators that are all-digital encrypt that service tier, industry officials and staffers at the FCC, which got Boxee’s letter last week, have said. The company sells a device that integrates Clear QAM cable basic cable signals with other online video. Any long-term solution for delivering basic-tier service to such devices should be hardware free, Boxee said. The commitments laid out in the letter (CD July 26 p13) wouldn’t apply to smaller operators, it told officials in office of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Office of General Counsel and Media Bureau, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bniqke). An NCTA spokeswoman declined to comment.
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"An order that approves encryption contingent upon compliance with the solution previously suggested by Boxee and Comcast, while permitting operators to petition for approval of other hardware-free solutions, would sufficiently protect consumers’ ability to choose to access the basic tier on non-operator provided devices,” the ex parte notice said. Any hardware-based solution should be temporary, it said. And any hardware-free solution should guarantee a “ClearQAM-like experience,” it said.
To achieve such an experience, operators must deliver basic tier programming as it airs, Boxee said. The solution shouldn’t require operator-provided hardware or features be included in third-party device hardware and not require any proprietary standards or require certification by the cable operator, the ex parte said. Third-party devices must be allowed to discover and control channels through industry-standard protocols that are commercially available and not proprietary to a cable operator, it said. The FCC should also bar cable operators from restricting the copying of the basic tier content beyond what current rules allow for unencrypted content, it said. The basic-tier service should be available to third-party devices of “all the subscribers within an encrypted system who have an internet connection, regardless of whether the cable operator is also such a subscriber’s internet service provider,” it said.
Any short-term hardware solutions should be simple to set up and operators should share the home-networking protocols they'll use before deploying them, Boxee said. That way, “third-party device makers can develop and test that their products properly support such operator-provided hardware,” it said.
Meanwhile, RCN continued to press the FCC to allow it to begin encrypting its basic service tier as soon as it releases its order (http://xrl.us/bniqni). “While RCN is reviewing the latest filings, it is somewhat differently situated than the top 6 incumbent cable operators,” the company’s attorney wrote in an ex parte notice disclosing a discussion with the Media Bureau on the topic.
Last week, Stephen Schultze, associate director for Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, highlighted some of what he referred to (CD July 13 p19) as the vague terms being used in the docket, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bniqnr). “Boxee’s reference to a ‘comparable successor to ClearQAM’ is vague and seems to be a logical impossibility,” he wrote. “This lack of specificity echoes the unclear language in Comcast’s comments regarding ‘a licensing path for integrating DTA technology into third-party devices,'” he said of digital tuning adapters. “NCTA is similarly vague in its recent Comments,” about how cable operators will use commercially-available security technology, he said.
The five largest U.S. cable operators have deployed more than 588,000 CableCARDs for use in retail devices, the NCTA said in a periodic update it provides to the FCC (http://xrl.us/bniqp5). Among the top nine cable operators, 618,000 have been deployed, it said.