The Federal Communications Commission this week closed up a rather healthy loophole that made it possible for cable operators to withhold local sports programming from competitors including satellite and telco players such as AT&T and Verizon. “Consumers who want to switch video providers shouldn’t have to give up their favorite team in the process,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in a statement.
The cheers of local sports fans aside, the move raises some interesting technology questions for tomorrow’s more switched, IPTV-style video networks — what besides sports programming should be broadcast live anyway?
Indeed, the FCC ruling brought to mind conversations I had this fall with Neil Cox, Qwest’s executive vice president –product development and management. Among Cox’s assertions was that consumers — between DVRs and Internet video viewing and emerging mobile apps — had conditioned themselves not to expect video programming to be live. In fact, they preferred it.
That meant telcos offering switched IPTV or broadband to the home services (Qwest today delivers cable programming via DirectTV satellite service and broadband via its wireline network) could focus much more on delivering an array of stored and on-demand video content rather than focusing on live, cable-TV -style programming. Cox talked about this approach in a speech in December:
Qwest is also taking a different path in its video-to-the-home business, based on the idea that very few services in the future will need to be live – perhaps only sports or news – and that rather than focusing on delivery, and controlling, video services into the home, it plans to take advantage of Ethernet-connected DirectTV boxes to allow a broad array of over-the-top services to enter the home.
“…We believe we have to add video to voice and we really believe once the development community understands they have a 20- or 40-gig landing place in the home [thanks to Qwest’s fiber-to-the-node and VDSL2 network], wait until you see what those apps will look like.”
With access to sports programming more securely under their belt, telco TV providers can feel even more secure following this strategy.