Thursday, November 01, 2007

Another Busy Day for the FCC

Today, the FCC was the butt of a Code Pink Prank. (Read the story). But the FCC was able to vote 5-0 to end cable exclusivity contracts in MDU - retroactively. This ruling will clearly be challenged by the NCTA and Comcast. Yet K-Mart thinks that this will increase competition at MDU's for TV. How? There's only one cable operator for most of America. DBS and TelcoTV (where available) makes up the competition. K-Mart still hasn't seen an RBOC request he can say No to. (I'd love to see the pics they have on him).

The exclusive contracts are usually to the benefit of the tenants and without the exclusivity many PCO's and smaller cable companies will not be able to invest the money to build into the MDU, according to Steve Ross, editor-in-chief of Broadband Properties mag.

Today's meeting was really about media ownership. With pressure from Congress and the panel, K-Mart said that he would wait till December to decide on rules.

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