IPTV Legislative Fight Previewed

TV over IP may come eventually to a television set near you, but not before a regulatory fight in the U.S. Congress.

It's a fight pitting two giant industries against each other -- cable television carriers vs. the largest telecommunications carriers -- with the two sides arguing over the rules that will govern competition for traditional television and advanced video and broadband services offered to U.S. residents.

This from a Grant Gross NetworkWorld story on a D.C forum that previewed the IPTV legislative battle.  Gross outlines the battle:

While telecom giants SBC and Verizon are already beginning to roll out IPTV services, they're also asking Congress to streamline the rules that forced cable TV carriers to negotiate franchise agreements with every local government where they provided service. The large telecom carriers faced heavy regulation in the traditional telephone market when they were the only providers, they argue, but when Congress opened up voice calls to competition in the 1996 Telecommunications Act, competing carriers had fewer regulations.

Two bills now before Congress would exempt cable TV competitors from local franchise requirements, although allowing local governments to continue receiving franchise fees. In essence, companies like SBC and Verizon would need to negotiate one national franchise, with the fees filtering back to local governments. The bills also require new video providers to offer educational and public access TV channels, as cable providers have been required to do.

Comments

[Tech Blog]

I always feel that the best entertainment on earth would be the ability for anyone to view anything. Ok, let’s put aside pornography or something related, we can assume that people like to see what is hard to be seen. For instance, you might just want to visit any country at any time without traveling there. I did mention before that what we can have is to organize a team of people acting as virtual tour guide and located at different locations. They will be equipped with VCR as well as video streaming capability to the Internet. What they would do is to wait for customer request and start shooting real time video.

http://brandonteohno1-it.blogspot.com/2005/07/real-time-entertainment.html