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AT&T ( T ) on Wednesday became the latest pay-TV company to lash out at Google parent Alphabet ( GOOGL ) in the wake of the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to open up the set-top box market to more suppliers. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler last week proposed a new rule that would make it easier for consumers to switch from set-top boxes rented from cable TV companies to devices sold by consumer electronics or Internet companies. Pay-TV providers such as Comcast ( CMCSA ) lease broadband cable modems as well as set-top-boxes to consumers, charging them on a monthly basis. The FCC aims to make programming bundles sold by pay-TV companies accessible from a wider range of devices. After Wheeler announced the initiative, Google followed up by demonstrating a set-top box to Congressional staffers at its Washington D.C. office, according to the “Future of TV Coalition,” a lobbying group formed by cable TV companies, industry groups, programmers and others. AT&T, in a blog post on Wednesday, took a shot at Google. “When you get beyond all the hype, Google and its affiliated proponents of this technology mandate are simply trying to take our competitive service and repackage it as their own, without ever having to negotiate with us or with the content owners with whom we had to negotiate to create our service offering. It’s akin to the FCC mandating that we get access to Google’s home page so that we can redesign and rebrand it as our own,” said Stacy Fuller, AT&T vice president of federal regulatory issues. A Comcast blog post last week said that companies concerned about the FCC proposal include: set-top box maker Arris Group ( ARRS ), Cisco Systems ( CSCO ) and Roku, as well as Walt Disney ( DIS ), 21 st Century Fox ( FOXA ), Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Viacom ( VIA ). Scott Cleland, head of consultancy Precursor Group said: “The FCC would be giving Google access to most of the benefits and business value of their pay-TV competitors for free. The real story here is Google wants to add TV advertising as their next-most-coveted market to dominate.” Scalper1 News
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