The FCC thinks it’s about time we overhauled the set-top box market

If the FCC has its way, cable subscribers in the United States will be able to lower their cable bills by choosing their own set-top boxes instead of the ones that their cable provider gives them. As it stands now, most subscribers rent their set-top boxes from their provider, and there have been numerous complaints that these boxes are overpriced and tend to favor content of the provider’s choosing. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wants to change this by allowing subscribers to use apps and set-top boxes of their choosing, which will not only allow them to escape their provider’s rental fees, but grant them more access to Internet-based content. As I’m sure you can imagine, cable and media companies aren’t fond of the idea, but Wheeler is moving forward with the proposal anyway.

Cable TV subscribers could get some relief from expensive set-top-box rental fees under a proposal from federal regulators. The proposal, from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, would put traditional pay TV programming on a wider range of devices and apps, the Wall Street Journal reports. For instance, companies like Google and Roku could offer their own boxes that integrate cable television with Internet programming. The Journal’s story doesn’t explain how this would work, but it sounds like Wheeler is leaning toward a system proposed last month by advocacy groups and some tech firms, including Google, TiVo, and Vizio. This group, called the Consumer Video Choice Coalition, recently met with the FCC to demonstrate its system, which displayed pay TV content from various providers using “off-the-shelf equipment and open standards,” Ars Technica reported. Not surprisingly, the cable industry strongly opposes this plan, arguing that it would be difficult to implement and could interfere with positioning deals, in which some networks pay more to appear higher in the channel guide. “They say it’s just a box, [but] it’s allowing another company to build an entirely different offering” from traditional cable service, said Michael Powell, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. It’s unclear why this would be a bad thing for consumers, but the industry also raises privacy concerns, pointing out that a company like Google could gain access to cable viewing data and advertise against it.