These days, I am fortunate to be working in a company that serves the broadcast, cable and entertainment markets. This unites my long interest in these industries with my love of deep-geek technology. (My company, Zixi, makes a video transport platform that allows these companies to develop new applications for high-quality streaming video.)
Since I run marketing for the company, I am motivated to consume all the industry news, including what regulators are doing that affects those businesses.
Scanning the recent news, I came across this article in Broadcast Engineering which describes the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to give cable operators another 18 months to support DLNA in set-top boxes as “a victory for cable companies.”
Duh.
The FCC has always hewed to the cable companies’ wishes…allowing them to incessantly raise prices, refuse to sell anything outside a bundle and dilute Internet neutrality. The FCC has been absent while MSOs (cable companies) have effectively killed every attempt to open their networks, from CableCard to (now) DLNA in set-top boxes.
It’s yet another brazenly public display of regulatory capture and industry kowtowing from the FCC, a regulator in need of a public-interest reset like few other agencies.
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