The American Cable Association said a number of the FCC's legacy regs "frustrate the public interest by imposing anti-competitive burdens on smaller operators."

That came in comments to the FCC on its latest biennial review of telecom regulations, which it is charged with reviewing and modifying or jettison ones that are not, or no longer, in the public interest.

ACA is particularly focused on the regulations on implementing the Universal Service Fund, the FCC-administered subsidy for advanced telecommunications.

ACA said smaller operators wind up bearing unnecessary costs and contributing more than their fair share to the fund--telecoms pay into the fund, often passing that cost on to subs in the form of higher monthly bills.

ACA wants the FCC to modify the contribution factor so it would cut down on costs and leave those operators more money to invest and compete against more highly capitalized competitors.

That, says ACA, would bring the rules in line with the public interest.

One argument ACA arguably could make is that it would free up more money for a particularly key investment--building out rural broadband, where ACA's member are on the front lines and which the FCC and Trump Administration says is a priority in an increasingly "internet of everything" world.

The American Cable Association has taken issue with Nexstar's online effort to sell the importance of its signals to local government and the impact of their absence from Antietam Broadband, with which it is currently at a retrans impasse.

ACA president Matt Polka blogged that Nexstar was pressuring a local government (in Hagerstown, Md.) to take its side in the dispute. While he called the request preposterous, he added that government oversight was in order, specifically the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and FCC attention to the proposed Nexstar-Tribune merger, which ACA has big problems with.

By citing the station's role in public safety in calling for local government help, says ACA, Nexstar "wants elected officials to pressure a private company to raise cable bills for their constituents."

For its part, Nexstar's WDVM Hagerstown has posted a series of short stories on its website pointing to the local news, sports, consumer and emergency info and other content Antietam subs are missing during the impasse, a variation on the more common theme of TV stations during impasses, which is that cable subs can access the signals over-the-air—with some stations even handing out over-the-air antennas to make the point.

In the story Polka was citing, WDVM staffers and execs attended a City Council meeting to demonstrate to the mayor and council the station's "commitment to the community." While the council did not appear prepared to weigh in, WDVM VP and GM Andrew Wyatt "wants the city to get involved," WDVM reported. "The city in general has an obligation and a duty here to try to keep the public safe. Our TV station does a great deal to keep this community safe," said Wyatt, according to the station website.

Calling for government intervention is not new. Both sides of retrans impasses have in the past sought FCC help, suggesting the other side was not negotiating in good faith. But as a general matter, broadcasters have fought government intervention in retrans disputes, arguing that it is a marketplace negotiation, while cable ops say that it is, instead, a thumb on the scale for broadcasters.

Polka used the opportunity to widen his criticism to the retrans regime writ large: "Nexstar’s actions confirm our longstanding view that something is fundamentally wrong in the retransmission consent marketplace more generally," said Polka. "As Congress renews key satellite television legislation this year, it should consider Nexstar’s behavior – and commonsense reform to protect the public from such behavior."

The FCC under previous management declined to make blackouts a de facto bad faith negotiation tactic.

As expected, the FCC has voted unanimously to eliminate an annual cable data reporting requirement, including on "network structure, system-wide capacity, programming, and number of subscribers."

The commission had voted unanimously to seek comment on the proposal back in November 2017. It had tentatively concluded that "marketplace, operational, and technological changes have overtaken the utility of Form 325 and rendered it increasingly obsolete, as reflected by the Commission’s extremely limited use of Form 325 data in recent years," and that the data could also he gleaned from other sources without burdening cable with the requirement.

It was just the latest in a serious of process "modernization of media regulation" reforms undertaken by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

The form 325 info had to be submitted by all cable systems with 20,000 or more subs and was required from a random sample of smaller systems.

"The record was unmistakably clear that the public benefits of Form 325's data collection no longer outweighed the significant burdens that the requirement imposes," said the American Cable Association. "Although cable operators expend considerable effort to provide the FCC the information collected by Form 325, the record shows that the value of this data to the FCC was fairly minimal and accessible to the FCC from alternative sources."

San Antonio, Texas — Over the past few decades one of the worst insults you could hurl at a cable operator was that it sold nothing but a “dumb pipe,” a conduit through which vastly smarter content flowed to increasingly sophisticated hardware.

But today, as broadband has become the business of choice for large and small operators — every publicly traded cable operator has more high-speed data customers than video customers — being a dumb pipe, it seems, isn’t so bad after all.

“The trends in pay TV have been absolutely horrible,” New Street Research managing director Jonathan Chaplin said at the National Cable Television Cooperative’s Winter Educational Conference here. “We’ve seen traditional linear pay TV subscribers falling off a cliff over the course of the last few years at an accelerating rate, and we think this trend continues. We think the economics of pay TV for cable companies are marginal at best.”

Cash-Flow Benefits
He then pointed to Charter Communications and Comcast, which he estimated generate $15 and $24 per month per customer in free cash flow from video, respectively.

“When a household cuts the cord and goes broadband-only, the increase in broadband pricing more than offsets the loss in profitability from the video product,” Chaplin said.

NCTC president Rich Fickle said that while some of the co-op’s members have de-emphasized video, it will likely remain in the cable package for a while. “Video is going to be a part of the equation for a long time,” he said. “It’s an established business, customers like the fact that they’ve got a good local operator that they can trust. It’s going to erode slowly over time.”

And the more that base erodes, the more cable becomes a content conduit. According to Chaplin, that’s not such a bad thing. “There is nothing wrong with being a dumb pipe,” he said. “It’s a magnificent business if there are no other pipes and if everybody wants your pipe.”

That last part might seem like a key caveat, but cable has consistently come out on top in the ongoing broadband wars, accounting for more than 100% of high-speed data customer additions for more than a decade. It seems that barring some unforeseeable calamity — like widespread, reliable and affordable 5G wireless service from telcos — cable will indeed remain the broadband pipe of choice.

Preserving that leadership role will be crucial because Chaplin doesn’t see a lot of video growth for cable operators down the road. “The entire future value of cable is in broadband — 80% of EBITDA, 90% of the enterprise value of these companies over the next few years.”

Some operators have already taken the bold move to de-emphasize video all together. Cable One did it a few years ago, as broadband revenue finally exceeded video revenue for the first time in 2016 ($344.2 million vs. $294.8 million for video). And while the big MSOs still reap a big chunk of revenue from video, the gap is closing. Comcast, the largest cable operator in the country, reported video revenue of $21.5 billion in 2015 and broadband revenue of $12.5 billion. Last year that gap narrowed to $23.1 billion for video, and $14.8 billion for broadband.

Not Too Far to Travel
American Cable Association president and CEO Matt Polka said from that perspective, it isn’t a big leap to just providing access to apps or other content sources.

“What’s wrong with giving the consumer access to go wherever they want to go?” Polka said. “We’re trying to enable all of that, our members are trying to get that choice and control more to the consumer to the extent the content companies allow us to do it.”

Retransmission consent fees are expected to rise an average of 88% by 2020 for small cable operators, according to a survey by the American Cable Association.

ACA, long an opponent of retrans regulations, surveyed its own membership and found that on average, they paid about $11 per month per subscriber in retransmission consent fees in 2017. That amount is expected to rise to $19 per subscriber per month by 2020.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed will see a drastic jump of at least 100% in fees in the next three years, and in one case that increase is expected to be 302%.

In response, the National Association of Broadcasters cited Kagan data that shows the pace of retrans increases have slowed significantly overall in the past several years from about 65% in 2010 to 10% in 2018. And they pointed to other Kagan data showing that retrans is still a small part – about one-sixth – of overall programming costs. In addition, broadcast ratings generally exceed that of cable channels, the NAB says.

But the gist of the ACA survey is that small operators copntinue to bear most of the burden of retrans increases. According to the organization, retrans fees are the fastest growing part of customers’ cable bills, adding that in some cases, cable subscribers across the country could see up to $15 in retrans fees added to their monthly cable bills by 2020.

“This is distressing,” said ACA president and CEO Matt Polka in a statement.  “Corporate broadcasters have become increasingly aggressive over the years in charging for retransmission consent, and it’s clear that they have no reservations taking escalating amounts of money from consumers to line their pockets.”

Related: FCC: Expanded Basic Cable Price Increased 3.4% in 2015

ACA included comments from some of its membership about the impact of retrans on their operations.

For example, Citizens Telephone & Cable president Brian Cornelius claimed under his current retrans agreements, charges will rise about 105% over the next three years, or about 50 times the rate of inflation. Citizens offers service in Higginsville, Corder and Mayview, Missouri.

“It’s crazy and unsustainable,” Cornelius said in a statement, “If gas prices did that, a tank of gas would go from about $30.00 to about $70.00.”

In December 2017, Citizens was paying $8.53 per subscriber per month in retransmission fees. This month broadcasters increased those fees to $14.65 per subscriber per month — a 72% increase.

They also refused to allow Citizens Telephone & Cablevision to offer a broadcast-free cable package, which would have allowed customers to opt to use an antenna in an effort to reduce their rates, according to the ACA.

Harrisonville Telephone Co., which operates in Monroe, Randolph and St. Clair counties in Illinois, said this year it has experienced retrans rate increases of more than 100%. In 2016, the company claims it was forced to carry multicast channels or be in direct violation of the local broadcast retransmission agreement.

“The corporate broadcasters are out of control,” Polka said in a statement. “No other industry operates this way.  No other sector would get away with such massive price increases in just three years.  Why is this okay?  Quite simply, it is not, and consumers should not have to pay the bill for something Washington should have changed years, if not decades, ago.”

Smaller cable operators have told the U.S. Trade representative not to include Canadian retrans payments into a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

That came in a letter Monday (Oct. 16) to USTR office trade policy staff committee chairman Edward Gresser from the American Cable Association.

That was a reference to comments last spring from broadcasters who argued that Canadian MVPDS should be paying border stations for carrying their signals.

ACA says requiring Canada's MVPDs would mean that Canadian TV stations would start charging American MVPDs carrying border Canadian stations in the U.S., further driving up the price of TV service to consumers.

ACA also says broadcasters have oversimplified the complex reciprocal copyright and communications provisions defining their respective rights.

ACA already argues the retrans system is an unfair advantage for broadcasters that leads to higher prices for consumers and not necessarily to the greater investment in programming and localism broadcasters claim.

On the other side, it argues, Canada would soon be subject to the same retrans blackouts ACA argues have been plaguing the U.S. Broadcasters counter that most carriage deals are struck without incident, and those where impasses occur are simply the expiration of contracts where the MVPD is not willing to pay the price broadcasters argue their must-have programming deserves.

"The harms outlined above would only be exacerbated if the USTR pursues changes to domestic Canadian law to establish a separate retransmission consent regime in that country under which United States broadcasters could demand payment from Canadian MVPDs," ACA concludes.

President Trump has long attacked NAFTA as a bad deal that needed renegotiating, a process currently underway.

Washington, D.C. -- "High speed data has years and years before showing signs of maturity," Cable One executive chairman Tom Might declared here Wednesday during a panel at the American Cable Association Summit

Echoing a growing view that over-the-top content is replacing traditional linear TV as a favored video source, especially among younger viewers,  Might said, "Were making more money on video today than we were five years ago," noting that about half of Cable One’s subscribers are focused on high-speed data service (HSD).

"We think over-the-top content is a great complement to our HSD-centric strategy," he said during a panel on "Leveraging Disruption in the Video Market." Might noted that Netflix service is integrated on Cable One’s TiVo boxes, but he admitted that "those are tough negotiations."

Might cited conversations with other independent cable operators here during ACA 24th annual Summit, with many of them skeptical about pulling back from linear video carriage. He said that Cable One applied Nielsen analytics to its services package starting about five years ago and found that "customers in some categories were not as profitable." 

"The psychographics of our own customer base" was surprising,  he confessed, but the company recognized that traditional customers were "largely going to competitors or satellite."  Moreover, about 10% had completely cut the cord.

With those findings, Cable One "had this Eureka! moment when we identified the value of different kinds of customers," he explained.

Might also said that with its digital plant in place, the company is better able to serve enterprise customers.

"Business services have grown at a steady rate and have a long road of opportunity ahead," he said.

Moderator Mark Robichaux (editorial director of NewBay Media's Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable) pointed out that in the last three quarters, "cord cutting is up and network ratings are down," observing that those factors may be contributing to operators' decisions to focus on broadband delivery services and "no longer pushing video."

RELATED: NCTC Accelerating OTT Content Packaging for Cable Ops

Dwayne Benefield, VP and head of Sony's PlayStation Vue, confirmed that he sees "a symbiotic relationship" between cable operators and OTT providers such as his.

By streaming Netflix, games, live TV, music and other services, "it helps drive acquisition for partners at a local level," Benefield said. He acknowledged that Sony is "talking to many companies in this room." 

Since PS Vue is not strictly tied to the PlayStation console for distribution, Benefield focused on the opportunities for cable delivery of its content. He claimed that, "We have more than 90% customer satisfaction levels."

RELATED: PlayStation Vue Bites Into Apple TV

Michael Smith, another panelist and professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, advised that operators could "look at marrying their brand to Vue, especially to reach the target demographic of 18-34 year olds."

Smith also recommended "not to think about Netflix as another channel."

"It is fundamentally a different business," he said. Smith is co-author of Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment, a new book that delves into Netflix role in the evolving market.

Too Many Commercials?

As for legacy video providers finding new roles in the evolving digital marketplace, Elisabeth Sami of NBC News identified a major challenge as "how to keep strong brand connections."  She also cautioned about the growing ad load on linear TV.

"The ad load today is harming our collective business as we compete with OTT services," said Sami, SVP-global strategy and business development of NBC News Group. "We need to reinvent what an advertisement will look like in the future.  There's talk about shortening ad pods by 30% and doing more target advertising. We're having to think about that a lot internally," she explained.

Although viewership on NBC's cable news as well as broadcast newscasts has climbed -- substantially due to interest in recent political developments -- Sami said that the networks "don't have a one-to-one connection" with viewers. 

"We're establishing them [viewer interactions] digitally," she explained, citing social media components that are now integrated into NBC News programming.

O'Rielly Seeks Operator Input  

Earlier in the program, FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly  focused on Open Internet/net neutrality, Business Data Services and policy reform. 

"I hope we can reopen the decision," O'Rielly said of the Title II ruling of the previous FCC majority. He said he disagrees with prioritization, noting that it was "incredibly problematic on how it tried to bifurcate the industry." 

O'Rielly characterized FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's efforts to "remove barriers" via process reform as "near and dear to my heart” and describing the effect of over-regulation as having "a unique and disproportionate effect on small businesses," which resonated well among the audience of small, independent cable operators.

During his onstage discussion with ACA president and CEO Matt Polka, O'Rielly (making his first-ever appearance at an ACA Summit) invited cable operators to tell the Commission, "What can we change to make your life easier - things that don't cause other industry segments to have a heart attack."   

O'Rielly said his goal is "to reduce the economic cost [and] to modernize our rules."

"Hopefully in this Commission, things will improve,” he said, and he smiled benignly when Polka reminded the Commissioner that he's now in the new majority.

The American Cable Association said it agrees with New Charter that the combined Charter-Time Warner Cable deal is in the public interest, so long as the FCC cans the broadband buildout condition.

The ACA had sought FCC reconsideration of the merger based on its imposition of the condition, which requires Charter to provide high-speed broadband -- of at least 60 Mbps -- to at least a million locations already served by at least 25 Mbps, an expansion of service that would come at the expense of smaller operators, the ACA said.

Read more about the Charter-TWC merger.

Charter had said that if the FCC gets rid of that condition, it should still find the rest of the merger in the public interest.

The ACA said it agrees and is only challenging the overbuild condition.

"The Commission has already found that the transfers are in the public interest, even when combined with an unlawful overbuild condition that exacerbates putative merger harms and injures consumers," the ACA said in reply comments filed with the FCC. "If that is correct, it necessarily follows that the transfers will also be in the public interest when that unlawful, inefficient and welfare-damaging overbuild condition is removed. The Commission should grant ACA’s petition for reconsideration and strike the overbuild condition."

Zoom Telephonics also has petitioned the FCC to reconsider the deal, seeking a rejection.

The advocacy arm of the Small Business Administration has told the FCC is concerned that the FCC's proposed new set-top box rules requiring MVPDs to make their set-top content and data available to third parties would be "disproportionately and significantly burdensome" on those small operators.

That is according to a copy of an ex parte letter.

The letter says the FCC did not attempt to quantify the economic impact on smaller entities, and points out that various stakeholders, including tech companies and public interest groups, support an exemption for smaller operators.

The SBA's Office of Advocacy was created to represent small businesses before federal agencies and is not necessarily reflecting the views of that government agency.

But it is definitely reflecting the views of the American Cable Association, whose members are the small operators the SBA is advocating for.

Saying it was "forwarding" the concerns of smaller operators, SBA counseled the FCC to study the impact of the rules and exempt small MVPDs when it votes on a final order.

"The Office of Advocacy represents an important voice for small business stakeholders who are worried about the disproportionate economic impacts on smaller operators, which would be ultimately harmful to consumers," said ACA President Matt Polka. "The Advocacy arm of the SBA joins a growing chorus of U.S. senators and representatives, technology companies, and organizations representing small businesses, public interests, and free market principles - some of which support the proposal - that are concerned about the proposal's unintended consequences on smaller operators."

The American Cable Association and National Cable Television Cooperative, long allied in the push to get the Federal Communications Commission to address issues like package deal programming negotiations, are ready for the agency to start drilling down on the issue.

The commission last week voted to launch, at the request of FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn, an inquiry into access by traditional and online programming to distribution platforms.

"With the release of the FCC's Notice of Inquiry, the programmers behind these unfortunate market trends will finally come under the close scrutiny they so clearly deserve," said Matt Polka, president of the American Cable Association, in a jointly released statement today (Feb. 25).

The topic should be top of mind next week, when ACA members meet in Washington for their annual policy summit and then call on regulators and legislators in the city. This past December, the two associations teamed up to complain in Washington about channel-bundling tactics AMC Networks was then using as part of renewal talks with the cooperative. AMC and the NCTC later reached contract terms, though AMC programming did come off some smaller carriers and remains off them, as The Wall Street Journalreported.  

NCTC, which negotiates program purchases for consortium of smaller providers, teamed with ACA to applaud the FCC inquiry, which both have long advocated.

"While we've completed many distribution agreements with new networks over the last few years in an effort to support diversity in content, unfortunately, our member operators are prevented from broadly supporting these networks as a result of the forced carriage terms demanded by large network groups," NCTC CEO Rich Fickle said in the statement.

Fickle says that some negotiations have included trying to discourage his member's support for alternative over-the-top video offerings, an issue the FCC definitely wants to hear about.

Obstructing access to OTT, if true, is definitely on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's list of anti-competitive no-nos.

In outlining the inquiry last week, Media Bureau chief Bill Lake called it a fact-finding enterprise on program diversity and possible ways to address complaints that cable operators and other multichannel video-programming distributors (MVPDs) might be stifling competition.

The NCTC and ACA are drawing the agency's attention to what they called "onerous requirements in cable company carriage contracts that require a high percentage of subscribers to take -- and pay for -- the programmers' suite of shows, regardless of popularity. These provisions, known as guaranteed minimum penetration clauses, have been criticized by consumer advocates and others for limiting customer choice." Distributors say their ability to experiment with lower-cost packages of channels, possibly tacked onto broadband subscriptions, are hindered by contract strictures that require many networks be included in the most popular packages of programs.

"Besides reducing consumer choice at a time when subscribers are increasingly seeking low-cost cable TV choices and accessing their favorite programs online, this 'penetration guarantee' requirement hinders our ability to take on new independent and diverse programming," Elaine Partridge, VP of programming for ACA and NCTC member NewWave Communications, said in the groups' statement. "These outdated requirements limit our ability to offer subscribers inexpensive options, including the low-cost 'lifeline' and local cable packages."

Added Jim Holanda, CEO of RCN Telecom Services and Grande Communications, in the statement: "These restrictions are a version of anti-consumer bundling, greatly limiting consumer choice and flexibility and keeping our viewers' fees artificially high. It forces subscribers to buy services they do not want, and hurts low-income consumers who would choose not to pay extra monthly charges to simply watch the local broadcast cable package." 

The FCC is inviting comment on the state of the marketplace and the challenges to entry. It’s also seeking comment on most favored nation and alternative distribution method provisions in contracts, which independent networks have said can hinder their access. It is also seeking comments on OTT distribution, program bundling, and issues affecting public, education and government (PEG) channels.

The FCC is also seeking comment on its legal authority to address any hindrances to distribution.

Phoenix -- Cable technology officers, dealing with bandwith consumption on their networks growing at 40%-50% per year, have to plan ahead, given that network capacity can't grow as fast as demand and given that a small number of heavy users tilt the scale so heavily.

And they have to factor in more than just Netflix and video. Al Kuolas, chief technology officer at cable provider Atlantic Broadband, said that "when you look at the future one of the things that probably scares me the most is this concept of a self-driving car.”  To work properly, he noted, a self-driven car will need lots of intelligence road closures and the latest maps. "Conceivably, you can imagine that every car needs a gigabyte of data updated every night.” He thinks the bandwidth demand growth rate will go beyond the 40%-50% happening now.

Kuolas spoke during an opening general session of the National Cable Television Cooperative's Winter Education Conference, a gathering of small to midsized multichannel-TV providers and supplier companies. 

Kuolas also talked about connected households and differing bandwidth needs among devices. Say the provider promises a 100 megabit per second service into the home, how fast should it work on the attic floor of a Victorian house? It seems from experience that 10 MBPS might be enough to keep Netflix working without breaking up and enough speed to keep customers relatively satisfied. “That might be the sort of medium ground that we agree to,” he said. Atlantic Broadband is trying to figure out what are "the minimum standards and the minimum specs that we’re going to offer as a truly connected home.” 

Ken Paker, CTO and vice president of network services at TDS Telecom, which owns independent phone companies and, increasingly, cable companies, said the uneven nature of demand during peak (6-11 p.m.) and non-peak periods strains the system. The difference between peak and non-peak broadband demand is about a 10-times ratio, he said. “The peak time is what’s driving the capital investment and that’s also how customers are rating our service,” Paker said, and there's no clear evolution to how product offerings and pricing evolves to address that situation.

The two CTOs -- and Jason Hansen, CTO of the Comway, Ark., municipal broadband provider -- said DOCSIS 3.1 will play an important role in managing bandwidth and providing gigabit broadband service. Hansen said Conway is hoping to have gigabit service on offer to the community by the end of this year. Kuolas said the first Atlantic Broadband gigabit markets will be in Connecticut this year, following through on promises made in acquiring former Metrocast systems there, but the Miami, Fla., market where Atlantic operates also will see early rollouts. Paker of TDS Telecom said gigabit service will be an important offering -- wanted by perhaps 15%-20% of the market -- and speeds of 60-100 MPBS are likely to be the biggest mainstream product.

Clearcable Networks CEO Rob McCann moderated the panel, which also included Rob Bazilewich, CTO at Access Communications in Canada, and Frank Miller, chief architect and vice president of architecture and roadmaps at CenturyLink.

Washington, D.C. -- Gigi Sohn, a top aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said Wednesday that the FCC’s Title II order was a light-touch approach to new regulations that should not have any adverse impact on smaller cable operators.

That came in a discussion with American Cable Association exec Ross Lieberman at the association’s annual summit in Washington. Lieberman said he would have to agree to disagree with Sohn on that point. Elsewhere at the convention, ACA execs said Title II would likely mean rate regulation and it had not ruled out suing the FCC.

Sohn said the chairman believes that “Light-touch Title II is not going to affect your businesses in any negative way.” She said the FCC is not applying 27 of 43 provisions, and the ones it is applying are on things like privacy protections, protections against billing fraud, and protections for the disabled. She said she hoped they could all agree those were important values, and as cable operators they were subject to privacy protections already. “I don’t want to be so glib as to say these are 'sleeves off the vest,’ because they are requirements,” she said, “but I don’t think you will find them burdensome.”

Lieberman said one thing that could be burdensome is rate regulation. Sohn said that the rules are really pretty much like the 2010 rules (Sohn was at the table when those compromise rules were hammered out), with the exception that paid prioritization is now clearly unacceptable, while under the old rules it was kind of “mushy-gushy.”

She said flatly: “We have decided not to apply every single administrative mechanism that would make rate regulation possible.” Some have argued that that only applies to ex ante regulation, not ex post virtual rate regulation through case-by-case review of business models, or that a future FCC could decide to “unforbear” rate regs, or the a court could reject the FCC’s pick-and-choose forbearance while leaving its Title II reclassification decision alone.

Sohn said that she did not mean to say the rate regulation concerns aren’t valid, but said she did think there was a little bit of scare tactics involved. “There is no desire by this FCC to do rate regulation.” And as to the suggestions about what the next chairman would do? “I would love to see the next chairman go to the Senate and say that they are interested in rate regulation,” she added, meaning that was clearly not going to happen. "I think it is politically infeasible and there is no reason for it and there is no interest [in] it." [as the story was originally written it was not clear Sohn was saying that rate regs would be a nonstarter for the next chairman as it was for this].

Asked about her boss’s agenda now that the Title II vote—if not the debate--is over, Sohn advised (warned) that the chairman planned an even busier agenda. “He actually wants us to do more this year than last year.” Topping the list are work on the broadcast incentive auction, the FCC proposal to define some linear over-the-top video providers, rules for the IP transition, and Lifeline subsidies for broadband.

While the OVD item has been described in the media mostly as a way to give new over-the-top video entrants equal program access footing with traditional video providers, but Sohn said it was a two-pronged effort.

One, she said, was clearly that program access parity and making the MVPD definition technology neutral (previously the FCC had found that an MVPD had to have the facilities as well as the channels).

But she said it was not only to give new services an opportunity for the programming, but also to make sure that incumbents “don’t start online services to evade the rules.” So, she said there is both a technology and a consumer protection component.

Sohn said she shared ACA’s concern about program bundling and price issues. She pointed out that the FCC last year voted to prevent joint retrans negotiations between noncommonly owned stations among the top four in a market, adding that Congress had later made it even better in the STELAR legislation by extending the prohibition to all noncommonly owned stations.  ACA had pushed for that and Lieberman thanked her.

Sohn said that while the chairman does not believe the retransmission consent market is irretrievably broken, but said he does believe it should and can be improved.

She pointed out that the FCC was currently looking at the “40-year-old” network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules, which was step one. Step two? She said that if ACA had “creative ways that we can help you with spiraling programming costs within our jurisdiction,” she wanted to hear from them.

Sohn went out of her way to praise Lieberman and ACA President Matt Polka for their advocacy on Title II. “ACA has put forth some of the best advocacy.” She said that while she did not always agree with them, they were always intelligent, factual and, best of all, civil, which is how she said she tried to be as an advocate—she is co-founder and former head of Public Knowledge. “Pay dues to these guys and they deliver.”