Cable Industry Embarrassed By The Word 'Cable,' Stops Using It

from the so-very-modern dept

In a bid to modernize its reputation as one of the least liked industries in America, the cable industry has a novel solution: to stop calling itself the cable industry. The industry's biggest lobbying and trade organization, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, first got the ball rolling in 2016 when it renamed itself the The Internet & Television Association. Despite the lion's share of its last mile still being on coaxial cable, the industry apparently hoped that eliminating "cable" from its name would somehow modernize the sector for the fiber era.

Not to be outdone, the American Cable Association, the policy and lobbying arm of over 750 smaller and mid-sized cable companies, has followed suit. It announced last week it too would be dropping the word cable from its name, and will now be called America’s Communications Association. Organization boss Matt Polka put it this way:

"“It’s all about the communications and connections our members provide,” said ACA Connects’ Polka. “Even though our industry and technology are changing so rapidly fueled by our members’ broadband deployments, what’s most important for our members and their customers is the ability to communicate freely and connect in their homes and businesses in countless new ways. With this name change, we’re recognizing that communication is the priority, not the medium."

Of course nothing else has actually changed. While a few bigger cable ops have flirted with full fiber to the home, most mid-to-small sized cable operators still lean heavily on coaxial. Even the faster DOCSIS 3.1 upgrades the sector has been pushing for several years (now under the misleading term "10G") leans heavily on... cable. And of course nothing about the name change will shift a negative public perception built over the last thirty years of an apathetic, geographically-monopolistic sector that not only charges an arm and a leg for substandard service, but often treats these customers with a sort of active disdain.

The name change doesn't change the fact that the ACA and its members provided full-throated support for the Trump and Ajit Pai FCC's frontal assault on consumer protections ranging from modest consumer privacy rules to net neutrality. Despite its quest to be seen as a more modern industry, Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica notes how Polka and the ACA have also occasionally claimed that more competition is a bad thing, or that net neutrality should apply to companies like Netflix (which makes no sense given it's not a geographic monopoly) but shouldn't apply to cable providers.

It probably goes without saying, but it's going to take more than the elimination of a single word to fix a sour reputation built over decades. Better customer service and lower prices would do that, but since telcos have stopped upgrading their networks in many areas, there's less and less competitive pressure forcing these cable providers futuristic techno-pioneers of tomorrow to try any harder.

Filed Under: cable, communications, internet
Companies: aca, america's communications association, american cable association

Cable Industry Lobbyist Proclaims Cable TV Industry 'Failing' While Advocating Against Broadband Consumer Rights

from the sigh dept

I'll forgive our dear readers if they don't have the name Matthew Polka floating in their memories right at this moment. As a refresher, he's the CEO of American Cable Association, the lobbying group that represents smaller cable and broadband providers. One would think that a group like this would be very interested in breaking up the near-monopolies held by the larger players in this industry and fostering more competition within the marketplace, except that Polka has literally said the opposite. The ACA has also been involved in battles against any sort of regulation in the broadband industry, against privacy rules with any real teeth, and against the plan to require cable companies to open service to third-party cable boxes.

And in some respects on those last points, I get it. Hey, the ACA is lobbying for its member clients, not for the American people. Even as Polka has made noise about how great non-competition would be for America, everyone knew that was silly. What he says is clearly crafted to make his cable company clients as happy as possible, obviously.

The cable TV business is in trouble—in fact, it is "failing" as a business due to rising programming costs and consumers switching from traditional TV subscriptions to online video streaming, according to a cable lobbyist group.

"As a business, it is failing," said Matthew Polka, CEO of the American Cable Association (ACA). "It is very, very difficult for a cable operator in many cases to even break even on the cable side of the business, which is why broadband is so important, giving consumers more of a choice that we can't give them on cable [TV]."

Well, that's certainly different. These comments by Polka about how the cable television industry is failing differ from the doom-and-gloom sideshow too often pitched as a reason for cable companies to not do all sorts of things that would benefit customers. Instead, Polka's tone appears to be sincere on this point: the cable television industry, as we have come to know it, is in its death throes. Given cord-cutting and a new customer adoption rate that has been falling in the younger generations, it's refreshing to hear a cable lobbyist come out and admit all of this.

The problem is that when you square this with the other point he made -- the importance of broadband -- a shiver bolts down the spine.

That's one reason cable companies in the ACA see broadband as "their future," Polka said. A cable company executive who appeared alongside Polka on the C-SPAN show echoed those comments.

Video is "certainly our worst product," said Tom Larsen, senior VP of government and public relations for cable company Mediacom. "It makes the least amount of money."

Larsen and Polka both praised the FCC's new Republican leadership for taking a deregulatory approach to broadband.

This, of course, refers in part to the gutting of net neutrality, the death of which is being to served to the American public by the same new leadership Polka is so happy to praise. It should be immediately clear what the ACA is hoping for when you take into account the sum of its previous stances, nearly all of which have been de facto anti-competition, as well as this newfound full focus on the broadband portion of its members' services. It expects to be able to strangle the ISP industry in the same way its anti-competitive practices helped pave the way for cable providers being unable to respond to customer demands.

Filed Under: broadband, cable, competition, consumer rights, tv
Companies: aca

Cable Industry Proclaims More Competition 'Hurts Consumers' & 'Damages Economic Efficiency'

from the bigger-ain't-better dept

"That overbuild condition is unlawful. It is not tailored to mitigate a merger-specific harm or confirm a merger-specific benefit. It will exacerbate the merger harms the Order identifies, damage economic efficiency, injure small providers, and harm consumers. The condition should be stricken."

"While the commission’s intentions in proposing the buildout requirement were undoubtedly good, the reality is imposing such a condition creates artificial competition in areas that cannot support it, which will ultimately undermine, rather than further, broadband availability and affordability in higher-cost areas in particular."

"When I talked to the FCC, I said I can’t overbuild another cable company, because then I could never buy it, because you always block those,” Rutledge said at the MoffettNathanson event. “It’s really about overbuilding telephone companies.” “Why would we go where we could get killed,” Rutledge said.

Filed Under: broadband, buildout, cable, competition, fcc
Companies: aca, bright house networks, charter, ncta, time warner cable