Senator McCain introduces A La Carte Cable Act
A La Carte Cable means you get to pick and choose which television channels you want to subscribe to. These plans are proven (by an FCC study) to help make cable more affordable for people with limited budgets and help bring educational programming into more households. I’ve found some more A La Carte news items and I want to share them with you.
Yesterday Arizona Senator John McCain introduced new legislation into the Senate. His Act is titled: The "Consumers Having Options in Cable Entertainment (CHOICE) Act of 2006 . An article about the bill can be found on the website DailyIPTV. The article describes Senator McCain’s bill as: “intended to give consumers more flexibility and choice in selecting channels from cable providers and is also intended to make the market more attractive to alternative providers and for IPTV by increasing the flexibility of the TV market throughout the US.”
Senator McCain’s press release says: "For almost 10 years, I have supported giving consumers the ability to buy cable channels individually, also known as a la carte, to provide consumers with more control over the viewing options in their home and their monthly cable bill," he added. "Cable companies have resisted this and have continued to give consumers all the 'choice' of a North Korean election ballot."
Federal Communications Commision chairman Kevin Martin is also quoted in the DailyIPTV article. Mr. Martin supports Senator McCain bill and says: “I support Sen. McCain's efforts to increase cable competition and choice for consumers, as well as to remove regulations that keep potential competitors out of the video business."
The telcos are spending a huge about of money to remove the need to work with municipalities and states to gain approval to operate national cable TV franchises. Senator McCain’s Act is reassuring; it says to me that even if we can not get Verizon to address what we feel is best for Red Bank then there are people in the Senate who are looking out for the issues that concern small towns like ours.
