FCC approves set-top box unlocking proposal


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Joseph O'Halloran

| 19 February 2016




Just over two weeks after floating the idea, the US broadcast regulator the FCC has officially approved a proposal designed to allow pay-TV subscribers to choose what technology they want to use to receive services.



Despite what will inevitably be bitter opposition, the regulator claims that its actions will ‘tear down anti-competitive barriers’ and pave the way for software, devices, and other ‘innovative’ solutions to compete with the set-top boxes that a majority of consumers lease from pay-TV providers today.

The FCC’s new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is designed to create a framework for providing innovators, device manufacturers and app developers, and, more essentially, reflect the ways in which consumers currently access pay-TV services. The regulator argues that customers currently have limited choices and lease set-top boxes (STBs) from their cable and satellite operators. It argues that lack of competition has meant few choices and high prices for consumers and calculates that on average pay-TYV subscribers spend $231 in rental fees annually for the average American household. In total for all subs in the country this comes to $20 billion a year to lease devices.

The FCC says that its ultimate goal is to “allow consumers to have a user-friendly interface that integrates pay-TV and streaming content on one device". In practice this will mean that pay-TV subscribers will freed from being forced to accept a box specified by the operators and providers. They could instead use equipment from retail device manufacturers such as TiVo and Apple or even a tablet.

The NPRM recommends that pay-TV providers be required to deliver three core information streams: service discovery; entitlements, namely information about what a device is allowed to do with content, such as recording; and content delivery, the video programming itself.