NCTA Seeks ISP-Carriage Clarity
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 2/11/2002 11:33:00 AM
The cable industry is urging federal regulators to ensure that rules mandating carriage of multiple Internet-service providers do not apply to information services offered by cable operators.
The Federal Communications Commission is nearing a decision on the regulatory classification of cable-modem service -- whether it's a cable service, an information service, or a telecommunications service. The FCC is expected to select information service.On Feb. 8, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association filed a letter with the FCC detailing the industry's concerns about regulatory uncertainty that might arise with the information-service classification, including possible ISP-carriage mandates.
In the letter, the NCTA said that if the FCC adopted information service but postponed a ruling on ISP-carriage requirements, the agency should state that no mandatory carriage rules currently apply to cable.
'This is the central question of the [cable-access proceeding], and failure to provide a clear answer as to current requirements will cause continued uncertainty in the marketplace and the courts,' the trade group added.
In other comments, the NCTA said cable operators should not be required to refund subscribers who paid franchise fees on cable-modem service when cable operators and local governments assumed that cable-modem service was a cable service, and not an information service.
The association said cable operators going forward should not be required to pay franchise fees when other information-service providers are exempt from such fees.
More broadly, the NCTA said, there should be no regulation of cable-modem service at the nonfederal level to be consistent with the congressional objective of avoiding regulation of the Internet.
