FCC Considers Broadband, Digital Future at Pa. Hearing

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FCC Considers Broadband, Digital Future at Pa. Hearing American Cable Association joins entrepreneurs, academics andpublic for FCC hearing on broadband By John Eggerton
House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee Vice ChairmanMike Doyle (D-Pa.) likened so-called mash-up artists, who sampleaudio and video clips to create original work, to dolphins caught“in the tuna network of digital piracy.”
That colorul metaphor came at an FCC hearing on "Broadband and theDigital Future" at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Monday,where the commissioners heard from online vets and startups,academics and the public.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who presided over the meeting, used theopportunity to point out again that cable bills had doubled overthe last decade, tying it to the need for greater video competitionfrom new sources, like IPTV (Internet Protocol TV). He also raisedthe issue of a la carte and program unbundling.
Martin did give cable props for investing $100 billion over thepast 10 years in infrastructure upgrades, but also paved the wayfor the Pittsburgh-based American Cable Association (ACA) to make apitch for changes to program bundling and retransmission consentregimes .

ACA said unbundling programming and fixing retrans would make iteasier for them to offer broadband, which they have to do despite"unique challenges," including the cost of maintaining a networkamong widely spread homes and the difficulty of accessing capital.
Any increase in bandwidth cost, including paying for unwantedchannels, has a direct correlation with smaller operators' abilityto provide broadband, says ACA President Matt Polka . Small cableoperators have no leverage with larger programmers who demandcarriage of unwanted channels, Polka said.
The American Civil Liberties Union took the opportunity of thehearing to take broadband networks to task for "deep-packetinspection," which is networks' ability to inspect packets ofinformation as they traverse the network in real time. The issuehas raised privacy concerns on Capitol Hill, particularly as itrelates to targeted advertising based on Web-surfing habits.
“The ACLU also urged the Commission to scrutinize the growingpractice of Internet Service Providers examining theircustomers’ Internet habits," ACLU said in written comments."Using Deep Packet Inspections (DPI), ISPs know everything we doonline. DPI allows ISPs to have access to all of your searches, friends and family, anything you read andemail, any sites you visit and any comments you post. DPI is avirtual strip search for you and your computer."
HDNet chairman Mark Cuban put in a pitch for 3-D TV, saying it wasgoing to become a fabric of the future, but that it would also takea lot of bandwidth.
He said that while the Internet should be open, he also said theremust be room for "application-specific" networks that are"reasonably open" but provide the necessary bandwidth.
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