NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow has just finished testifying before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet on the issue of “Competitive Availability of Navigation Devices,” as covered by the National Broadband Plan. You can see a written copy of his testimony here.

In his testimony, Kyle referenced the seven principles that NCTA submitted to the FCC, outlining a foundation for Commission and inter-industry efforts to support innovation and consumer access to video services, from any source:

1. Consumers should have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can access their multichannel provider’s video services without a set-top box supplied by that provider.
2. Consumers should also have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can access any multichannel provider’s video services through an interface solution offered by that provider.
3. Consumers should have the option to access video content from the Internet through their multichannel provider’s video devices and retail video devices.
4. Consumers should have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can search for video content across multiple content sources, including content from their multichannel provider, the Internet, or other sources.
5. Consumers should have the option to easily and securely move video content between and among devices in their homes.
6. Consumers should be assured the benefits of continuous innovation and variety in video products, devices, and services provided by multichannel providers and at retail.
7. To maximize consumer benefits and to ensure competitive neutrality in a highly dynamic marketplace, these principles should be embraced by all video providers, implemented flexibly to accommodate different network architectures and diverse

As Kyle said, the cable industry is committed to providing video content to consumers where and when they want it, on all possible consumer devices, and for those devices to be innovative platforms for new applications. We look forward to working with the FCC on these issues.

Today’s FCC public meeting focused on the future of set-top boxes and the current CableCARD regime.

As John Eggerton reported for B&C:

The inquiry asks for comment on developing an interface device in the home for “all consumer devices,” which the FCC says will achieve four key goals:

1) Spur investment and innovation in the market for retail devices that work with any pay TV service

2) Allow providers to innovate and compete in offering services without requiring consumers to switch devices

3) Generate more competition and consumer choice.

4) Encourage wider broadband use and adoption.

NCTA issued a statement today from Kyle McSlarrow, our President & CEO:

We applaud the Commission for adopting a Notice of Inquiry that will explore how best to achieve a competitive retail marketplace for devices that can access the video services of all multichannel providers. We are very pleased that the Notice appears to be consistent with the series of consumer principles governing video devices which we have submitted to the Commission, especially in its recognition that the appropriate solution must involve all multichannel video providers.

We also welcome and applaud the Commission’s targeted examination of the current CableCARD regime, particularly the proposal to increase our industry’s ability to deploy low cost high-definition Digital Terminal Adapters. Low cost digital adapters are a vital tool for all cable systems to recapture bandwidth that can be used to provide consumers with faster broadband speeds, more HD channels, and other interactive services.

The participation of all Multichannel Video Programming Distributors is quite critical. I’ll point you to this previous post: Comments on the Video Device Recommendations in the National Broadband Plan. Here’s a key quote:

The cable industry has consistently asked the Commission to take a fresh look at the CableCARD and navigation device rules in light of today’s market where 40 million consumers subscribe to video service from satellite and telephone providers. Most of cable’s competitors have been exempted from the rules which clearly haven’t led us to the place that Congress envisioned in the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Any approach isn’t going to be completely effective if only the cable industry is implementing it.

NCTA’s President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow appeared last week on the public radio program The Diane Rehm Show.  Guest host Frank Sesno and guests Amy Schatz, of the Wall Street Journal, and Ben Scott, of Free Press, discussed the recent Circuit Court decision involving Comcast and the FCC, as well as the larger issue of telecom policy, especially net neutrality.

I found it to be a very enlightening discussion, but in a very frustrating way.

Let’s step back to a post I wrote last November (“A Reminder of What “Net Neutrality” Is Really About”). At that time, I looked back at the public discussion of net neutrality since 2006, noting that it had evolved from a simplistic discussion about ISPs blocking access to certain sites or deliberately slowing access to others to a more realistic and complex discussion of network management. I expressed my displeasure that we seemed to have slipped back into a hair-on-fire emergency rush to “Save the Internet,” which was apparently about to end unless we had net neutrality regulation.

Last Thursday, Amy Schatz echoed these same concerns as she spoke of worries that Comcast or Time Warner or AT&T might decide to block your access to an Amazon or eBay.  Ben Scott said that if ISPs could steer consumers towards content they owned and away from competing content, that they probably would do so.

Kyle pointed out that cable companies have no interest in blocking since that would rob cable high-speed access service of its value to go freely about the Internet. He said that we have repeatedly expressed our support for an open Internet and that critics can only point to two instances – and one has now been dismissed by the courts – of questionable behavior despite trillions of transactions.  He also noted that there is competition, especially with the growth of wireless (look at the new iPad with 3G), and pointed out that dissatisfied consumers would voice their displeasure if a provider blocked content.

But the calls and emails came into the show and people expressed their concern about what cable companies might do. No one offered examples of actual problems occurring. But they’re worried. They didn’t feel they could trust cable operators, because prices for video service get increased (something that’s not really true for Internet access) or because a cable technician sometimes shows up late for a service call.

When the talk wasn’t about “cable companies might do this,” it sometimes slipped into “cable companies will do this.”

For example, in the podcast version of the broadcast, at about 42:30, Kyle says, “There is literally – with very few instances – no evidence of a requirement that the government needs to intervene.” Ben replies:

Except for the CEOs of all the major cable and telephone companies who say, ‘We want to change the way the Internet works and we want to control content; we want to speed some content up; we want to slow some content down; we want to put ourselves between consumers and the content and change the business model.’”

I would love to see the documentary evidence of all the CEOs of major cable companies who have said that they want to speed up access to some content and slow down access to other content.  I’ve never seen such evidence. Consumer groups like Free Press love to make this accusation, but when you ask them if they think ISPs should be able to offer dedicated access for latency-sensitive applications such as telemedicine, they suddenly hem and haw and say that sort of thing is completely different.  Of course, they’re in favor of telemedicine.

What was really frustrating is that the critics missed the point that the court decision had nothing to do with blocking access to Amazon or slowing down eBay. It had to do with managing networks and whether the FCC exceeded their authority. “How should ISPs be allowed to manage networks?” is a legitimate question. “Will Comcast block me from Netflix?” is a silly question.

In contrast, at 39:30, John from Leesburg, VA called to ask about these issues from an engineer’s perspective. He particularly asked how rural telecom providers are supposed to manage their already-limited resources. Proponents of net neutrality always feel that ISPs should be able to manage their networks in ways that are good, such as blocking viruses, and not in ways that are bad, such as blocking access to websites. But who decides where the lines are drawn? Who writes the complicated rules that govern this behavior?

Part of what drives the debate about net neutrality lies in a key point was raised in the program by Sesno.

You use more, you pay more. You have higher speeds, you pay more. You own the company, you charge differently. The idea that there’s something special about the Web, that it should be wide open and free, in a sense, is unlike any other business proposition that we’re really talking about.

The Internet is powerful and impactful. It does seem to make people think that the old rules don’t apply, that the Internet is very different from everything else and quite special. Part of what is going on right now with the National Broadband Plan and the proposal of net neutrality is that we’re figuring out how to best move forward. What’s fair? What benefits our society?

These are important questions and we hope that we can all mutually come up with the solutions that provide consumers the best possible broadband experience.

The column below appeared today in The USA Today, as an opposing view to a USA Today editorial.

Opposing view on ‘Net neutrality’: Providers back Web freedom

By Kyle McSlarrow

On Tuesday, a federal court struck down a Federal Communications Commission order enforcing a rule that the agency hadn’t ever actually adopted. The court’s decision does not call into question an Internet policy adopted unanimously by the FCC in 2005 — endorsed by all broadband providers — promoting a free and open Internet. Thus, the decision has no effect on the Internet experience that consumers enjoy, and it doesn’t alter the government’s existing authorities to protect consumers or to police anti-competitive conduct.

Today, 65% of American households subscribe to services provided by a number of competing broadband companies to access a growing number of exciting applications that have changed the way we all communicate, conduct business, gather news and information and consume entertainment.

But there are still gaps. Not every community has broadband, and not every household that has access subscribes. Here, too, nothing in this week’s court decision affects our collective ability to implement the vision of a connected nation.

Broadband providers agree that consumers should have the freedom to navigate the Internet and access any legal content or application of their choice. That isn’t at issue. But fears of what broadband providers “could” do have prompted the usual and predictable calls for more — and, in some instances, incredibly far-reaching — government regulation of a marketplace that has been an American success story.

Why? In precisely two instances — and one of them is debatable — out of trillions of transactions over the past decade, has anyone even been able to point to a specific problem. Contrast that with the overwhelming evidence of hundreds of billions of investment to build and expand networks and the incredible array of new applications and sites flourishing because of a bipartisan policy of regulatory restraint.

We fully intend to work with the FCC and other policymakers to preserve the open Internet that is a reality today. But it is a massive overreaction to suggest that we should impose decades-old regulatory regimes designed for the days of Ma Bell and a government-sanctioned monopoly on the Internet.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today issued its opinion in Comcast v. FCC.  Below is the statement from NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow on the opinion:

“The Court correctly ruled that a specific order by the previous FCC was wrong.  We cannot state strongly enough that this decision will change nothing about the cable industry’s longstanding commitment to provide consumers the best possible broadband experience.  Nor does the ruling alter the government’s current ability to protect consumers.  We continue to embrace a free and open Internet as the right policy and will continue to work with the Commission and other policymakers and stakeholders to find a sound way of preserving that goal.”