Set-Top Box Proposal Pits Tech Against Telecoms

An interesting battle seems to be shaping up between tech/advertising companies like Google and the cable industry and, as usual, you and I are stuck in the middle with virtually no say in the result.  Earlier this year, the FCC proposed rule changes that would allow competition in the set-top boxes that people use to receive cable and online video.  Sadly for cable industry, this competition would severely cut into the nearly $20 billion that the industry makes from forcing you to rent that box from them. That was blow number one.

Then came a proposal to force the cable companies to lease some bandwidth to competitors with limits on what could be charged, further cutting into cables’ potential revenue. Blow number two. 

But the final proposal relating to privacy provisions really sticks it to the cable companies. That proposal restricts the companies’ use to collect and share data for targeting customer advertising but applied those rules only to cable and telecom companies, specifically exempting companies like Google. Along with the set-top rule, this would mean that Google could track user data for advertising purpose through a set-top box that Google provides but that the cable companies could not do the very same tracking with the set-top box that they provide.

It is hard to ever feel bad for the cable industry in particular. They have had a virtual monopoly for decades now and their poor service is notorious (see this painful attempt to cancel Comcast service). But, in this case, you do have to feel that they really are being treated unfairly. Needless to say, the cable and telecom industries are going all out to stop these FCC rule changes, spending over $20 million in lobbying just in the first quarter of this year. And while these two industries battle it out, more and more young people have cut the cable cord completely while the rest of us oldsters still cling to that dream of just being able to subscribe to only the cable channels we want. At the rate things are going, cable may die long before that dream becomes a reality.