The FCC’s set-top box integration ban must die,...

The FCC’s set-top box integration ban must die, said House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, and Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai in a joint op-ed for The Washington Times (http://bit.ly/1sWHSEB). “By ending the integration ban, we can kill two birds with one stone,” they said. “We will take a step toward reducing consumers’ cable and energy bills. We will recognize the marketplace as it is today, not how the government theorized and planned it to be more than a decade ago.” This issue has become a hot one before Congress in the past year, as Latta introduced legislation last fall to kill the integration ban. That legislation has since been included in one Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act bill, HR-4572, which cleared the Commerce Committee. The Computer & Communications Industry Association along with its member company TiVo have loudly objected to these provisions and campaigned to keep them off STELA. “Today, there are myriad avenues for consumers to access video content without using a set-top box supplied by a cable company or a CableCARD,” Pai and Latta argued, calling the integration ban outdated. “Roku, Google, Amazon and Apple all offer streaming set-top boxes."