The FCC says all cable companies need to use CableCards in their set top boxes. A cable card is a signal encryption device that is removable (Like a SIM card in your phone). The point of this would be that if everyone from 1st partis (like Comcast and now Verizon) to 3rd parties like Tivo and whoever used the Cable Cards to handle the encryption of the signal it would make it cheaper to manufacture the Cable Cards and easier for cable customers to choose whether they wanted a 1st party set top box or a 3rd party one (which there would be more of if Cable Card takes off).
Verizon is requesting that since they're new to the market, having to comply with this and add cable card functionality to their set top boxes would slow down their rollout and that letting them introduce FIOS to more markets would save more people more money that the money their customers would save from having Cable Card in all of their boxes (boy that was a crappy sentence).
Apparenlty the Cable Card idea has been around for 10 years and the cable companies have been purpopsely avoiding implementing it. It seems the FCC is fed up.
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Summation of article:
The FCC says all cable companies need to use CableCards in their set top boxes. A cable card is a signal encryption device that is removable (Like a SIM card in your phone). The point of this would be that if everyone from 1st partis (like Comcast and now Verizon) to 3rd parties like Tivo and whoever used the Cable Cards to handle the encryption of the signal it would make it cheaper to manufacture the Cable Cards and easier for cable customers to choose whether they wanted a 1st party set top box or a 3rd party one (which there would be more of if Cable Card takes off).
Verizon is requesting that since they're new to the market, having to comply with this and add cable card functionality to their set top boxes would slow down their rollout and that letting them introduce FIOS to more markets would save more people more money that the money their customers would save from having Cable Card in all of their boxes (boy that was a crappy sentence).
Apparenlty the Cable Card idea has been around for 10 years and the cable companies have been purpopsely avoiding implementing it. It seems the FCC is fed up.
The cable card idea has been around much longer than 10 years. The legislation was passed over ten years ago.
wow, thanks