The Commission's Cable Horizontal and Vertical Ownership Limits

This document adopts a rule prohibiting cable operators from owning or having an attributable interest in cable systems serving more than 30 percent of multichannel video programming subscribers nationwide. It also eliminates the overbuilder exception, which allowed cable operators to count against its horizontal limit only those cable subscribers served by its "incumbent cable franchises" and excluding new subscribers gained through overbuilding "non-incumbent cable systems. Elimination of the exception prevents a cable operator near the horizontal limit from using the exception to exceed the 30 percent limit and thereby reduce the open field below the 70 percent necessary to ensure that no single operator can, by simply refusing to carry a video network, cause it to fail. The revised rule balances the need to ensure that cable operators cannot use their dominant position in the multichannel video programming distribution (MVPD) market to impede unfairly the flow of video programming to consumers with consideration of the efficiencies and other benefits that might be gained through increased ownership or control.