Lathen Helping S-A on Set-Top Issue
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 3/13/2003 1:41:00 PM
Deborah Lathen, former chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Cable Services Bureau, is helping Scientific-Atlanta Inc. on digital set-top-box issues before the agency.
S-A and many cable operators are fighting a January 2005 mandate that would bar MSOs from introducing new integrated set-top boxes into the market.
In 1998, the FCC said it wanted new MSO-supplied boxes to physically separate encryption components from normal channel-surfing functions. The mandate was designed to promote the retail sale of set-tops.
Lathen and several S-A executives made the rounds at the FCC March 11 to brief various officials on the January 2005 sunset.
S-A wants the commission, before allowing the 2005 deadline to occur, to examine the effects of the recent cable/digital-TV interoperability agreement between major MSOs and consumer-electronics manufacturers.
The vendor is also urging the agency to review how well integrated boxes sell in retail outlets.
On the same day, Mark Coblitz, Comcast Corp.'s senior vice president of strategic planning, also met with FCC officials urging elimination of the ban on integrated boxes.
Comcast and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association argued that nonintegrated boxes would needlessly impose cost burdens on consumers who lease set-tops.
"Retaining the current prohibition would impose substantial additional costs on consumers while achieving no significant consumer benefits," Comcast outside counsel James Casserly said in an FCC filing Wednesday.
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