‘Unlocking’ Pandora’s Set-Top Box: Devil Is in the Details of FCC Proposal for Pay TV

[Commentary] In January, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced new rules that will soon require pay TV providers to deploy technology that will “unlock” the humble set-top box. Now that the agency has published the details of Chairman Wheeler’s plan, the devil has proven to be very much in the details. Like Pandora, opening the set-top box will unintentionally let loose the video industry’s most pernicious demons — many of them the creation of the FCC in the half-century since the disruptive introduction of cable TV in the 1950s.

For one thing, Chairman Wheeler failed to mention that this is at least the fourth time the FCC has tried to establish new technical standards for a video industry already experiencing accelerating transformation, or what my co-author and I refer to as “Big Bang Disruption.” All the earlier efforts failed utterly. And by ignoring that history, the agency is poised to repeat it. Chairman Wheeler’s proposal seemed to many like a no-brainer — free money for consumers at the stroke of a pen. Now that we know what the FCC is really up to, it’s clear that nothing could be further from the truth. CableCARD 2.0 will likely cost consumers more, and will expose their viewing habits to, well, everyone. The new standard will be a virus, infecting every future video device, app and service for years to come.

[Larry Downes is Project Director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]