CEA Asks Media Bureau to Rescind Charter’s CableCARD Waiver
The FCC Media Bureau contradicted its own rules and exceeded its authority when it granted Charter Communications a two-year waiver from the agency’s CableCARD rules in April (CD April 22 p3), said CEA. The association’s application for review (http://bit.ly/16FKP51) filed Monday asked the bureau to reconsider or rescind the order. “In freeing Charter from its post-waiver obligations by fashioning arbitrary conditions never offered for public comment, while declining to determine whether this outcome complies with Commission regulations ... the Bureau’s Order exceeds both its own delegated authority and the Commission’s legal authority,” said CEA. Spokeswomen for Charter and the bureau declined to comment.
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CEA said the bureau’s April waiver order conflicts with previous commission rules requiring cable companies to supply all customers with CableCARDs, since it requires the company to supply them to customers only until “a third party device compatible with Charter’s downloadable security is available for purchase at retail.” According to CEA, since that criterion had never been subjected to public comment, the bureau overreached its authority by granting the waiver order, which CEA called “a dangerous precedent."
The waiver order “deals in assumptions and hopes rather than in facts” when it comes to Charter’s proposed downloadable security system, CEA said. Charter hasn’t shown that its security system will be interoperable with other systems, CEA said. It described as “baseless” the language in the waiver order encouraging the development of a national, compatible security system. “Neither Charter nor the Bureau can point to any evidence that the cable industry is prepared to re-embrace this goal or such technology,” said CEA.
CEA’s application for review also attacks the waiver order for explicitly saying that because of the January EchoStar decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (http://bit.ly/10nMM3E), companies don’t need waivers to implement downloadable security systems that comply with the integration ban. CEA said “this offhand suggestion” exceeds the bureau’s authority and “was not subject to public comment, and should be specifically disclaimed by the Commission."
An official at another company working on downloadable security said CEA’s complaints against the waiver aren’t really about CableCARDs. “None of the filings in this say cable cards are a great idea,” said Stephen Effros, director-strategic communications at Beyond Broadband Technology (BBT). CEA cited a BBT ex parte letter as evidence that Charter’s technology was incompatible with other technology. Effros said CEA is defending CableCARD rules to try to force the commission to adopt AllVid technology rules. “They just want to keep everybody’s feet to the fire” said Effros. “This is not about AllVid,” said CEA Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Julie Kearney. “This is about preserving what’s written in the statute.” CEA hopes to have its application taken up by the commission soon, despite the transition to Acting Chairman Mignon Clyburn, Kearney said. “Like any person filing an application for review, we want it acted upon as soon as possible.”