COMPTEL Seeks Senate Video Hearing

Competitive telecommunication carriers, including NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association and COMPTEL, have asked Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) to hold a hearing looking into the video marketplace, specifically what they say are failures that need addressing, including a revamp of the retransmission consent regime that allows broadcasters a programming "stranglehold." The groups argue that access to video is directly related to the issue of broadband deployment, which is the prime directive of communications policy these days.

"[T]he retransmission consent regime is more than twenty years old and reflects an era with very different marketplace realities," they said in a letter to Chairman Thune. "This regime gives broadcast stations a stranglehold over access to programming and prevents providers from negotiating market-based rates for programming. As a result, consumers face blackouts of channels and ever escalating video costs." They also want the committee to look at program tying and bundling, which they have long argued "impede the ability of consumers to avail themselves of alternative choices."