“It ain’t 1992 and it ain’t 1996,” said Paul Maxwell of MediaBiz at the America Cable Association’s 20th Anniversary Summit in Washington D.C. Maxwell was referring to a telecom environment that has changed from one of silos to one of a converged network with converged services. He suggests a two-tier regulatory environment, with different rules for smaller operators than big operators. This idea gets to the very heart of why the ACA was formed 20 years ago.
He also implies that we should look south to Mexico, which is looking at requiring must-carry, but without retransmission consent (at least for larger broadcasters). As he said in his comments as emcee for ACA’s 20th Anniversary dinner, “This may make Carlos Slim, slimmer”.
Regarding broadcasters, he touches upon GCI’s purchase of three Alaska broadcast stations (which is under FCC review) and some of the resulting implications. As pointed out in the interview, Google has an interesting way to represent the TV white space opportunity in their recently released spectrum database tool.
The interview ends by asking Maxwell who his cable mentors were. On a personal note, it was an honor to finally meet Mr. Maxwell and hear his insight after so many years of reading his well entertaining and thought-provoking newsletters.
2013 ACA Summit coverage brought to you by the ACA and ViodiTV.
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