miscDude
join:2005-03-24
Hendersonville, NC | reply to jmn1207
Re: Curious My opinion is in part that once the gov'ment gets ahold of something to regulate, it doesn't like to give it up.
Consumer Sat Tech is pretty mature these days... but Telco-TV is still maturing and getting out there. If the Gov'ment decides to regulate cable, I believe it should do so on a pay-tv provider level and not a delivery method level. Currently Telco-TV is limited to basically overbuilds of existing cable areas. Sat Technically has a 100% coverage rate, if you don't factor line-of-sight issues.
There's also the simple fact that should they write the regs such that only "Cable" is regulated, what happens to the cable-co's if they device to the FTTH? Are they no longer subject to that regulation because they no longer a cable-tv provider but instead a IPTV provider via Fiber?
Also, much of the regulation "wish list" we've seen is stuff like ala-carte, which is much more of content provider issue. If they are trying to force changes in the content contracts such to allow customer to ala-carte programming, then that should be something applied across their industry, and not just a forced contract condition on only a subset of their customer's. (cable co's vs sat/telco-tv/hotels/etc etc) |
| Verizon FiOS uses cable standards and cable equipment, not IPTV. I see no reason why it shouldn't be regulated like a cable company.
In fact, doesn't it have to negotiate cable franchises itself? |
