FCC Chairman: Digital TV on track

by Etan Horowitz

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin says he opposes pushing back the Feb.17 Digital TV transition because it would confuse consumers.

Last week, the co-chair of President-elect Barack Obama's transition team wrote a letter to Congress suggesting the delay because the government has essentially run out of $40 converter box coupons.

Martin said he agrees that Congress needs to act quickly to fix the converter box coupon problem, but he said he didn't think a delay would be the best solution.

"We spent a lot of time making sure everyone knows about Feb.17 and it is almost universal now," Martin said. "What kind of a message will it send if we have been telling everybody this is the day it is going to happen and we don't do it?"

Martin suggested that Congress could change the rules governing the distribution of coupons, eliminate the 90-day coupon expiration date or allocate more money.

"It is important for us to try and solve the coupon problem without moving the date," Martin said.

During his tenure as chairman, Martin has been a vocal critic of the cable industry and supporter of a-la carte cable, which would allow consumers to pay for only channels they actually watch.

"I wish we had made more progress on trying to have additional competition on the video side to address a dramatic increase in cable prices," Martin said.

Under Martin's leadership, the FCC did require all cable companies to offer Cablecards, which allow consumers to receive cable programming without having to rent a set top box from the cable company. Cablecards can be placed in certain computers, televisions and TiVo boxes.

But consumers who have Cablecards are not able to access on-demand programming and interactive channel guides from the cable company. They can access on-demand content from Internet services such as Amazon or YouTube, but Martin says they should be able to get both on one device.

"We always want to do everything as quickly as we can, but that was a particularly difficult decision for us," Martin said when asked if the FCC took too long to make a decision on the merger. "The fact that the two companies were struggling and the fact that they agreed to certain conditions like not raising prices meant consumers were better off with allowing the merger to go forward."

Martin said that he thinks the FCC and the government should do more to to make sure that people living in rural areas are able to receive telecommunications service such as high-speed Internet.

He also said that the proliferation of radio and TV content from the Internet will likely cause the FCC to rethink its views of monopolies.