CableCARD Shortage, cont

Looks like there was a little more to that RCN customer who complained to the FCC about the overbuilder’s inability to supply him with a CableCARD late last month (Cfax, 4/23). David Yoffie is also a member of the board for Intel, which filed an opposition to Comcast‘s July 1 waiver request last year. Comm Daily 1st reported the connection. In a letter earlier this month, Yoffie asked FCC chmn Kevin Martin to deny RCN’s waiver to the set-top integration ban (he did not mention his Intel link). In another letter last week, Seth Greenstein, an attorney who says he works on issues involving content protection and cable service, also cited the card shortage and called on the FCC to deny RCN’s waiver request. Calling Greenstein a long-standing representative of CE industry interests, RCN responded Fri by telling the FCC that his letter goes "well beyond a customer complaint," noting that he quizzed CSRs on the technical 1394 interface. "Given his recital of the ensuing conversation, we begin to think that the electronics industry must be getting very worried that the FCC will grant our limited waiver request if its representative needs to resort to testing our customer service department’s knowledge of international standards interface terminology," Richard Ramlall, RCN’s svp, strategic and external affairs, said Mon.