Comcast Fires Back at FCC by Making TV Service Available Without a Set-Top Box
April 20 2016 - 6:30PM
Dow Jones News
Comcast Corp. fired back at the Federal Communications
Commission's set-top box proposal by making its full TV lineup
available on Roku devices and Samsung smart TVs for the first time,
without requiring customers to lease its proprietary box.
The company launched a program Wednesday to partner with any and
all device makers to offer the app more widely.
"We remain committed to giving our customers more choice in how,
when and where they access their subscription," said Mark Hess,
senior vice president in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer
at Comcast Cable.
Comcast's move comes amid a heated debate raging in Washington,
D.C. over the merits of a recent push by the FCC and the White
House to force operators to decouple their cable TV service from
proprietary set-top boxes they lease to customers. The FCC has said
its "Unlock the Box" campaign will create more choices for
consumers, with the aim of lowering prices and offering better
access to Internet video options. The agency's plan has called for
open standards to allow device makers to easily get access to
pay-TV content and channel listings.
Opponents of the proposal have said the FCC's move could upset
important parts of their business, such as advertising and cable
channel placement. They say technology companies like Alphabet
Inc.'s Google would be able to access valuable data about
consumers' viewing habits. Cable executives have noted that a move
away from set-top boxes has organically been happening in the
market. Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications Inc. are
trying out apps on the Roku device that offer their TV service
without requiring a set-top box.
"If the FCC's set-top box proceeding is truly just about freeing
consumers from monthly box fees, today's announcement underscores
how absurd the arguments for government intervention are,"
according to The Future of TV Coalition, a group backed by cable TV
providers and TV channels. "Apps, not federal box mandates, are the
fastest and most effective way to expand consumers' options for
video devices."
An FCC official expressed skepticism about the move's
significance.
"While we do not know all of the details of this announcement,
it appears to offer only a proprietary, Comcast-controlled user
interface and seems to allow only Comcast content on different
devices, rather than allowing those devices to integrate or search
across Comcast content as well as other content consumers subscribe
to," the FCC official said.
Comcast's new Xfinity TV app isn't an "over-the-top" service
like Netflix or Sling TV. It's only available for Comcast customers
in their own homes and doesn't travel over the public Internet
portion of Comcast's cable pipes. It also doesn't count toward data
usage as a result, since it is akin to a traditional cable TV
service, albeit in Internet protocol format.
Some of the perks that come with Comcast's proprietary X1 box,
like voice-enabled searching with their remote, won't be available
through third-party device makers. But the app will include live,
on-demand programming, as well as an option for saving programs on
a cloud-based digital video recorder.
John McKinnon contributed to this article.
Write to Shalini Ramachandran at
shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 20, 2016 18:15 ET (22:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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