Add the name of Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) to the list of legislators and public interest groups at the FCC’s decision to take a modest congressional order regarding small cable systems and turn it into a massive giveaway to the very largest companies.
The issue is the FCC’s decision to institute a presumption of competition for the entire MVPD industry.
Congress authorized the FCC to come to the assistance of small cable companies. It wasn’t even small cable companies in general, it was those in rural areas, said Mikulski in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.
“Instead, the FCC’s proposed rules would apply to all cable providers and the FCC’s proposal appears to assume that all communities served by cable operators are ‘effectively competitive,’ with no obligation on cable operators to show evidence of competition in the market.”
Mikulski stated, “As always, my interest is in protecting my constituent’s access to local news, politics, sports, cultural events, and emergency notification. And I am concerned about the impact that this proposal could have on cable consumers by potentially making it more difficult or expensive for consumers to access certain programming.”
She concluded, “I urge the FCC to reconsider its proposal to deregulate the cable industry and instead follow the narrow changes that Congress passed.”
RBR+TVBR observation: It seems like the FCC will go out of its way to try to rein in broadcasters, and it seems like it also goes out of its way to give away the store to MVPDs. Why?
Comcast just announced that one of its major goals is to improve customer service. Commendable, but really? They just now figured out there is a problem?
We used to play softball with and against a good friend who happened to be a flack for NCTA back in the 80s, and we could joke around about anything under the sun except cable customer service. He spent too much of his workweek on that topic.
Why would a service company have a horrible record on customer service? Because it has no effective competition, that’s why. A consumer cannot fire Comcast and walk across the street and hire Charter or TWC or DISH or FiOS. It just isn’t that easy.
Cable hasn’t quite figured out how to offer good customer service, but they are pretty good at jacking up the monthly cable bill.
So by all means, FCC – let’s reward MVPDs with the ability to downgrade service and up prices even more with a presumption of competition based on nothing more than supposition that can likely be countered by just about any MVPD subscriber in the nation. Brilliant!
