Comcast Is About to Sell You Cable TV Without the Cable Box – Bloomberg (Jan 31, 2017)
This announcement was very well timed given the apparent death of FCC set top box reform reported earlier today. Comcast has argued all along that market forces will bring the choice in set top boxes consumers want, and this announcement is a useful token of that vision. It’s limited – it’s Roku only for now, and customers still have to have an old-style STB in the home as well until later this year. It also appears customers will still have to pay something for the privilege of using a box they own rather than one of Comcast’s. This is progress of a sort, but very much the kind of progress the cable companies are willing to go along with – with control, fees, and more still in place to some extent. The more interesting question is whether Comcast might use this experiment as the basis for a broader rollout of over-the-top Xfinity TV services outside its footprint – that would be far more disruptive.
via Bloomberg
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