FCC Grants 10 MSOs POD Relief

Cable World, August 21, 2000 by Jim Barthold

The FCC has temporarily waived point-of-deployment (POD) module compliance for 10 cable operators representing 133 systems. The waivers, which range from several months until Dec. 31, 2001, give operators time to meet rules for devices that separate signal encryption from other features in retail-based hybrid analog/digital set4ops. The operator would place descrambling information in the POD and give it to subscribers who buy set-tops.

Adelphia, AT&T Broadband, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications and Cox had systems that were unable to comply with the FCC's July 31 POD deadline.

"We really did go through all these, looking at them individually," says William Johnson, deputy chief in the FCC's Cable Services Bureau, calling it "unlikely" that these are the only systems that don't comply.

The FCC, he adds, was "sympathetic" toward systems that needed time to consolidate headends and "tended to give some time, not always what they asked for" to operators completing rebuilds.

For others, it was a different story.

"Sometimes they would add a digital tier, and they'd have Showtime and HBO on the analog tier," he says. "It would appear they could easily add to the digital tier, but they just didn't. We weren't very sympathetic to those."

Whether or not PODs will be needed - as many operators and vendors privately insist- is irrelevant, Johnson says.

"If we agree with that, then there would never be any PODs, and there would never be any host devices, and there wouldn't be any retail market," he says. "This business about whether these PODs devices successfully do what they're supposed to do is some interesting stuff, which is not the subject of this."