Civil rights groups push FCC for details of set-top box plan

A group of civil rights organizations is asking the Federal Communications Commission to release more details of its contentious proposal to open up the market for television set-top boxes.

The NAACP, the National Urban League and the Rainbow Push Coalition were among the 19 organizations that signed on to the petition.

{mosads}“Let’s be clear: the plan the FCC is now considering is not the same plan the public had a chance to review months ago,” Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, said in a statement.

“By all accounts, it has changed dramatically,” he said. “But because the FCC refuses to release the details, we have no idea whether the concerns we’ve voiced have been addressed.”

An FCC spokesperson said the agency had received the petition and is reviewing it.

Many of the civil rights groups involved were also allied with major internet service providers when the companies were trying to beat back strict net neutrality rules the FCC approved last year. They have drawn criticism for that position.

The groups join lawmakers in asking commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to release more details of the proposed rules. They would require pay-television providers like Comcast or DirecTV to create applications through which customers could stream live television programming, potentially allowing them to stop renting a set-top box.

That plan is already an alternative to Wheeler’s initial proposal — which the commission started considering earlier this year — which would have required pay-TV provider to open their feeds to companies that wanted to make their own boxes. Wheeler’s original plan was criticized as having the potential to hurt minority programmers.

Though the revised proposal was supposed to come to a vote last week, Wheeler pulled it from the agency’s agenda right before the start of its monthly open meeting. That drew renewed calls from critics for the agency to again seek public comment on the rules, likely through a procedural device called a further notice of proposed rulemaking (FNPRM).

“The FCC’s set-top box rule making can only be improved from additional public review and comment, and I urge the Commission to issue an FNPRM in this proceeding,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) in a letter to Wheeler.

But Wheeler has been reluctant to seek further public comment on the proposal.

“I don’t think that this is an issue where the public has not had an opportunity to express themselves or has not been heard,” he said after the meeting last Thursday.