NCTA Answers Critics of CableCard Stance

Says It Will Support Retail Boxes, But Pushes For End to Leased CableCard Set-Tops

By John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 6/29/2010 1:14:38 PM

Washington -- The National Cable & Telecommunications Association says it is not out to sabotage the half-million cable customers who use retail set-tops.


The FCC was trying to drive a retail market in those boxes, but has conceded the move has not worked.

Some of those commenters had used that false pretense to try to impose new rules and obligations on the industry, the NCTA said.

The cable group said that it continues to support the 1% of its customers who use the retail boxes, but that there was no reason to adopt the CEA's suggestion that the cable operator provide more technical support for those retail boxes.

"If a leased device is not working, operators can support it, fix it, or replace it free of charge," said the NCTA in i0ts comments. "If a retail device is not working, cable operators will ensure that the CableCard is working, but the retail equipment is otherwise the responsibility of the customer and the device manufacturer."

Public Knowledge argued that bundled-services deals that include leased boxes undercut the retail market, but the NCTA said that discount bundles "have benefited consumers with considerable savings, and disassembling package discounts would undermine the very transactional economies that help keep discounts deep."

The NCTA renewed its request that the ban on integrated set-tops be lifted for newly leased boxes.

"The time has come to relieve cable operators of the burden to deploy CableCards in all of their new leased boxes," it said. Cable operators have deployed 21 million of the CableCard-enabled leased boxes, compared to only 520,000 retail boxes.

"Requiring cable operators to install millions more CableCards in additional leased devices ... will not revive the flagging consumer and manufacturer interest in one-way devices that cannot access video-on-demand and other two-way services," the NCTA said.