Purchasing a DCT700 from eBay

[Vumes]

I just got off the phone with the Fiber Solutions Center and here is Verizon's official stance. After speaking with David, he informed me that should the customer fail to return the STB, he gets billed for it. If the customer pays, then it is considered ownership, but Verizon will not re-activate that box without it coming back into Verizon ownership. Should that box be recovered by Verizon, the original customer will get a full credit back for the price that they charged him for not returning the box.

So there it is, an answer to my question and to anyone else who was just wondering.

[JerseyJoe]

I'm still not sure why this isn't a violation of FCC regulations.  The Motorola DCT700 is a device that Verizon has specifically approved for operaton on its cable TV system, so why should it matter who owns the box?  Section 629 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 USC 549) was specifically written to prevent the cable companies from requiring that customers purchase or lease the equipment required to access the video programming on their systems.  In this case, the equipment was purchased from Verizon, at some point, so why should the customer be required to sell the gear back to Verizon, who will then lease it back to the customer, before they deign to reauthorize it on their system?

[KenAF]

---

@JerseyJoe wrote:
I'm still not sure why this isn't a violation of FCC regulations.  The Motorola DCT700 is a device that Verizon has specifically approved for operaton on its cable TV system, so why should it matter who owns the box?

---

Motorola does not sell DCT700 devices to consumers.  Motorola sells DCT700 boxes exclusively to cable companies.  As a general rule, cable companies will not authorize stolen or lost equipment.

---

@JerseyJoe wrote:
Section 629 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 USC 549) was specifically written to prevent the cable companies from requiring that customers purchase or lease the equipment required to access the video programming on their systems. 

---

The FCC is responsible for carrying out that legislation.   Per FCC regulations, the CableCard standard satisfied the requirements of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Customers are free to purchase CableCard boxes that are available at retail to the public.  That includes the Moxi and TivoHD.  Over time, more choices should become available, including more TVs with integrated CableCard slots.

Message Edited by KenAF on 07-20-2009 02:02 PM

[JerseyJoe]

---

KenAF wrote:

Motorola does not sell DCT700 devices to consumers.  Motorola sells DCT700 boxes exclusively to cable companies.  As a general rule, cable companies will not authorize stolen or lost equipment.

---

As the previous poster pointed out, if you fail to return an STB to Verizon, they charge you for it.  If you pay the charge and Verizon accepts the payment, then you own it.  It's ridiculous and inaccurate to call it "stolen" if someone has paid hundreds of dollars for it.  Furthermore, it doesn't matter that Motorola only sells exclusively to the cable companies.  Verizon purchased the box from Motorola, then sold it to the consumer by charging the "lost box" fee. Once the consumer owns it, he's free to sell it to whomever he chooses.

---

KenAF wrote:

---

JerseyJoe wrote:
Section 629 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (47 USC 549) was specifically written to prevent the cable companies from requiring that customers purchase or lease the equipment required to access the video programming on their systems. 

---

The FCC is responsible for carrying out that legislation.   Per FCC regulations, the CableCard standard satisfied the requirements of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

---

Yes, I'm aware of that, too.  I should have phrased my post more carefully.  I know that what Verizon is doing does not run afoul of current FCC regulations.  My point was that the spirit of the law that directed the FCC to develop the regulations is to prevent MVPDs like Verizon from doing exactly what they're doing here: forcing the customer to buy or rent a piece of equipment from the cable company.  In this case, we're talking about simply authorizing a piece of equipment that Verizon already uses throughout their network, but they don't want to give up the recurring rental revenue, so they arbitrarily enforce a "we have to own it" rule.

---

KenAF wrote: 

Customers are free to purchase CableCard boxes that are available at retail to the public.  That includes the Moxi and TivoHD.  Over time, more choices should become available, including more TVs with integrated CableCard slots.

---

 

And yet we still have to rent the CableCARD itself from Verizon, for almost as much money as an STB.  Look, I'm not blaming Verizon for all of this, there's plenty of blame for the FCC, here, too.  Congress' idea was that the consumer wasn't supposed to have to buy or rent anything from the cable companies in order to access their programming, just like the Carterfone decision finally freed us all to buy own telephones from someone other than Ma Bell.  CableCARD is better than nothing, but the fact that I still have to pay $4 a month per CableCARD to use my own DVRs is maddening, and the fact that it *still* doesn't provide full two-way communication for VOD, PPV, and SDV is doubly so.

 

[KenAF]

---

As the previous poster pointed out, if you fail to return an STB to Verizon, they charge you for it.  If you pay the charge and Verizon accepts the payment, then you own it.  It's ridiculous and inaccurate to call it "stolen" if someone has paid hundreds of dollars for it.  Furthermore, it doesn't matter that Motorola only sells exclusively to the cable companies.  Verizon purchased the box from Motorola, then sold it to the consumer by charging the "lost box" fee. Once the consumer owns it, he's free to sell it to whomever he chooses.

---

Cable companies (and Verizon) don't treat lost or recompensated equipment as customer owned.  Like every other cable company, Verizon corporate considers the fee to be for "failure to return the equipment."  They do not consider it as a fee to "purchase the equipment."

Verizon and other cable companise are not compensated for the overwhelming majority of all lost and unreturned equipment, and it would be a logistical nightmare for cable companies to keep track of what specific DCT700 units were "paid for" across all of their various service areas.  Most larger cable companies now use DCT700 boxes purchased from Motorola, and they have no interest in working together to create and maintain a database of authorized and unauthorized (i.e. stolen) devices.

[philhu]

This is wrong. Verizon/Cable company DOES consider it customer owned. Please read their response a few items back. Therefore, if it is customer owned, why can it not be authorized? The white elephant in the room is that Verizon, et al., do not want 'possibly modifed' equipment authorized, so they don't