Cable Industry Pushing for Emailing Customers Rule Change
Cable is lining up behind a joint NCTA/American Cable Association FCC petition seeking approval for emailing customers such information as instructions and services offered (see 1603080052). The proposal is "a no brainer," one lawyer with cable clients told us. The attorney said it remains to be seen whether the FCC moves on it quickly -- perhaps as a bone to throw the cable industry, which has heavily criticized Chairman Tom Wheeler of late (see 1605200037) -- or slowly -- because it has so much else on its plate.
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Thursday was the deadline for comments in docket 16-126, with replies due June 10. Comments posted Thursday and Friday including from Charter Communications and USTelecom backed the proposal. They made similar two-pronged arguments: that cutting paper notifications would be environmentally sound/operationally more efficient and that customers increasingly prefer electronic communications, as evidenced by an increasing number signing up for electronic billing.
ACA President Matt Polka emailed us that he is "encouraged" by the absence of any opposition "to what we believe is a sensible request of the Media Bureau to update its rules to meet consumers’ present-day expectations for receiving notices from their service providers.”
The NCTA/ACA clarification would give consumers "fast and more convenient access to information," while consumers who still want to get “‘snail mail’ ... would be accommodated upon request,” Cox Communications said. Cox also said NCTA was too conservative in its estimate the clarification would save 100 million pieces of paper annually, saying that number accounts only for required annual notices to existing customers, and not the written information given to new customers at service installation time.
"Businesses and consumers alike are inexorably migrating from paper to electronic communications," Suddenlink said, saying roughly 200,000 customers, or about 20 percent of its customer base, get their bills paperless. Given FCC pushes in broadband deployment and electronic communications, Suddenlink said, "It would be ironic if the FCC ... moved in the opposite direction in this proceeding and somehow concluded that cable companies can provide 'written information' to their customers only through traditional paper distribution." Altice bought Suddenlink.
Comcast said it also backs NCTA/ACA in their asking the FCC to confirm notices required under Section 76.1603 of the commission's rules -- namely, notices of such issues as changes in rates, programming services or channel positions -- also can be provided by electronic communications. The agency 20 years ago allowed 76.1603 notices to be conveyed by newspaper announcements, and Comcast said that "emails and other forms of electronic communications that are reasonably calculated to reach individual consumers are surely now a far more effective means of conveying notices than is publication in local newspapers." It also pushed for electronic communications as "the general rule across the board," pointing to the FCC 2014 report on process reform finding that any paper distribution is "difficult to justify.”