(Washington, DC) Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke to a packed room today at a Progress and Freedom Foundation lunch here calling for new policies that open up the voice market to greater competition from cable. In particular, Comcast and the cable industry seek new rules that would require phone companies to, first, give cable operators the same interconnection rights that non-VoIP providers enjoy and, secondly, speed up number portability changes.
Before bringing it home on the issue of voice competition rules, Roberts recapped how cable has been shaped by Washington and offered a broad view of how technology is outpacing policy makers’ ability to grasp it. “The computer has truly crashed itno the TV and we’re only at the beginning,” Roberts said.
“Our ultimate goal is to deliver converged voice, video and data services to all devices,” he said, adding that “it’s hard to sync up public policy on the one hand with such a dynamic industry on the other hand.”
He used as his example of Washington’s lag behind technology’s progress the relatively arcane, but nonetheless potentially costly, topic of retail availability of cable set-top boxes. Long story short: the cable industry wants the FCC to waive a mandatory 2007 deadline for the manufacture and availability of cable set-tops that have physically separable security cards. (Here’s a more detailed explanation.) But that requirement, which has its roots in the 1996 Telecom Act, has been rendered archaic by the development of downloadable software security.
Nonetheless, the 2007 deadline stands, even though it might cost the cable industry hundreds of millions of dollars to buy boxes that will shortly thereafter be made obsolete by new security software technology, Roberts noted. Cable wants the deadline extended, in essence, until 2009, when the new software will be ready.
Signaling the new lobbying push by the cable industry, Roberts called for reform in phone company interconnection regulations, saying that his company had been hampered by the telcos’ refusals to provide interconnection to their local voice circuits. He also said that new policies are needed to speed number portability when telco customers switch over to cable’s VoIP services.
“Promoting voice competition deserves as much and arguably more attention from Washington” than do the arguments for video competition, Roberts said. Consumer benefits are “four times greater than the video savings promoted by the Bells.”
Roberts claimed that phone companies have been denying Comcast interconnection to their local voice facilities saying that the law allows them to exclude VoIP providers from the mandatory interconnection that applies to other voice competitors. Verizon in Pennsylvania takes seven days to port a customer’s number over to Comcast’s network even though the telco somehow manages the same switch-over in twenty-four hours when a customer wants to move to Verizon Wireless, he said.
“I’m asking for better, smarter regulations that promote facilities-based competition…and faster porting.” Moreover, he called for a “meeting of the minds between federal and state regulators and legislators on how we and the telcos” are treated.
Roberts spent almost no time in his speech discussing network neutrality, other than to say “it remains a solution in search of a problem.” Later, during Q and A with a panel of Wall Street analysts, Roberts elaborated a little by claiming that network neutrality regulations could have a “chilling effect” on business. “Nothing could be worse or more chilling than saying ‘by the way…here are some new rules on what you can and cannot do.’”
Nonetheless, net neutrality proponents have “understandable worries,” Roberts said. He sought to minimize the fear by pointing out that it would be in Comcast’s worst interest to mess around with what consumers can access on the Internet. “The day you can’t get a satisfying experience from Comcast.net is the day you switch [to a competitor].”
Roberts seemed to make news on the sports network carriage front by proclaiming his willingness to sit down with the sports leagues and team owners to work out problems surrounding network carriage and license fees. “I think it’s time for a dialog and I would be willing to participate with no pre-conditions,” he said.
Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) made a brief appearance to introduce Roberts. During his short remarks, Stevens said that it’s not out of the question that Congress will pass telecom reform legislation this year, although the bill won’t pass before Congress goes on its mid-term election recess. “I hope we can schedule it when we come back for the [lame-duck] session on November 13th,” Stevens said. “It is possible still to get it passed.”
Cynthia Brumfield at 2:52 PM|Comments(0)
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