Earlier this year, the US Senate published a study that found the average American household pays $231 a year to rent a cable box. Additionally, it estimated that a staggering 99% of cable customers choose to rent their equipment rather than buy, which adds up to approximately $19.5 billion the cable industry is collecting year over year, to have consumers rent their cable boxes.
Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the two senators who commissioned the study, made note that this dependable form of revenue gives the industry little incentive to change their processes, or otherwise make better cable boxes worth buying.
It’s this latter point that’s worth exploring a bit further — why aren’t more people buying their own cable boxes? To put it simply — it’s too hard to own one. Besides having the knowledge necessary to troubleshoot and resolve technical issues with the box when things go awry, purchasing a box involves lots of research and up-front costs, two things that quite frankly, today’s consumers don’t want to have to deal with. Renting one is much easier to do, and technical support is offered if and when the box breaks down so, even if it costs a few hundred dollars a year, the peace of mind is worth it to most Americans.
The Federal Communication Commission has taken note of this disconcerting slant in favor of the cable industry, and has begun taking the steps necessary to force the cable industry to adopt changes that will ultimately see it bring about services compatible with other equipment.
One solution proposed by the FCC in a recent report is that cable services be accessible via mobile app; that is, consumers would buy their own devices and access cable services much in the same manner that they do with program hosting sites like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Devices that support this solution include Google’s Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire.
Another option, which was alluded to before, would be to provide consumers an easier path to owning their own cable box; preferably one that won’t break down as easily, and also allow the consumer to easily search programs both on cable as well as those on online services.
“You search for the name of a movie, and if it’s airing on TV, it’ll show you those results. But if it’s on Netflix, it’ll show you the movie result there,” says John Bergmayer, an attorney at the consumer group Public Knowledge (which is on the FCC’s advisory committee, along with experts from the cable and tech industries).
Bergmayer went on to explain that while cable companies obviously don’t want to be sending their consumers to sites like Netflix, they soon may not have a choice.
“There’s never been more choice and competition for consumers and how they receive their content,” says Brian Dietz, a spokesman for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, eluding to the fact that there’s no better time than the present to begin implementing change.
The FCC’s research into this is ongoing. At present, the Commission is in the information gathering phase, and accepting comments on the advisory committee’s report, which you can read here.
Story via MarketPlace
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