NATOA, Some Municipal Governments Push FCC for Cable Performance Testing Requirements

Acceptance of cable industry arguments that the FCC should avoid adopting digital cable performance testing requirements could hurt customers, NATOA and some municipal governments told the commission last week, in reply comments on a rulemaking that would set up digital cable signal leakage and quality rules (CD Aug 6 p10). Distributors continued to push in their replies against such testing requirements and for a certification process instead.

Local franchise authorities have few enforcement tools to address performance problems without federal rules, NATOA said (http://xrl.us/bodpdj). Even if the commission adopts the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers SCTE 40 standard for assessing signal quality -- a move the pay-TV industry largely supports -- local officials will be limited in their ability to force operators to fix problems if a local test finds the SCTE 40 isn’t being met, NATOA said. “Design certification is not a substitute for actual testing and reporting,” it said.

The Sacramento (California) Metropolitan Cable TV Commission agreed. It has had problems working with Comcast and AT&T to address consumer complaints, it said (http://xrl.us/bodpd8). Both companies tend to drag their feet when following up with local staff on a complaint’s status, it said. “Certain case managers are generally not responsive to our emails requesting updates on the status of pending, overdue complaints,” it said of Comcast. “We believe our efforts to address these types of technical complaints ... would be more effective if the Commission would issue up-to-date technical standards."

As NATOA proposed in initial comments, the FCC should make sure there is at least one test point in every franchise area with at least 1,000 subscribers, Montgomery County, Md., said (http://xrl.us/bodphb). The FCC should ignore calls by the NCTA to eliminate the subjective picture test of “good visual quality,” the county said. “There is nothing unique about digital technology that makes this subjective test less relevant,” it said.

The NCTA and American Cable Association (ACA) each argued against testing requirements. Contrary to the suggestions of the City of New York, regular technical testing and recordkeeping probably won’t be of much use to consumers, it said (http://xrl.us/bodphs). “It strains credulity that many consumers will have the highly technical knowledge needed to make any useful comparisons of the digital proof-of-performance test results of different cable operators,” it said. Moreover, the fact that Dish and DirecTV have added subscribers in the absence of any such requirements “begs the question as to whether the average consumer knows or cares about this testing data,” it said.

If the FCC doesn’t adopt NCTA’s certification proposal, the agency should at least let smaller cable operators meet signal quality requirements through certification rather than testing, the ACA said. Such relief, for operators with fewer than 400,000 total subscribers, would be consistent with pervious FCC actions, it said (http://xrl.us/bodpke).