The FCC’s 30% cable subscriber cap has been thrown out by the U.S. Court of Appeals reports MultiChannel News today. This is a huge win for Comcast who obviously is quite pleased about the decision:
"We are pleased the DC Circuit has vindicated our position," said Comcast executive director, corporate communications and government affairs Sena Fitzmaurice. "This important decision affirms that rules must reflect the changing realities of the dynamic video marketplace where today consumers have more choice in video providers and channels than ever before."
Consumer advocates of course are not happy crying fowl over Comcast’s vast subscriber. Two arguments against the decision are pricing from the Cable Co’s that has been continually on the rise and limited choice for consumers.
Although I am not the happiest with the pricing of TV/Internet packages out there the courts were correct in their decision. The is a TON of competition out there for broadcast entertainment. These cap decisions that were initially argued and made back in the late 90′s and 2001 might have been justified then but that was almost a decade ago and the landscape and technology sector is vastly different from today.
Where I live is a good example. We switched from Comcast over to AT&T’s U-Verse about 8 months ago and it was a fantastic decision. Not all markets are as lucky as us here in the Bay Area but we can choose between cable, AT&T, Dish Network, DirecTV, OR take the Netflix/Hulu/Boxee/Online Scraps route which a few of my friends have started to do. The caps are artificial at this point and are not relevant given the current competitive landscape.
Now I would just like to see the satellite guys and AT&T/Verizon continue to tighten the screws on Cable and start to get that pricing down.
The complete decision is embedded below
