Just before yesterday's vote to boost competition in the cable set-top box market, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler showed the audience a letter that cable lobbyists sent to the FCC in March 2010.

At the time, the FCC was preparing its National Broadband Plan, which among many other things recommended new rules "to ensure a competitive and innovation video set-top box market." The National Cable & Telecommunications Association wrote to then-Chairman Julius Genachowski urging him not to enact any such rules. Genachowski never did.

But what Wheeler pointed out is that the letter said customers should be able to watch their TV channels on set-top boxes that aren't rented to them by the cable company.

"In 2010, the cable industry supported, and I quote, 'cross-industry approaches to develop a fully competitive and innovative retail video device marketplace,'" Wheeler said. "The people who have said 'this is the end of the world' actually supported a competitive video device."

Specifically, the NCTA's letter said that "Consumers should have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can access their multichannel provider’s video services without a set-top box supplied by that provider" and that consumers "should have the option to purchase video devices at retail that can search for video content across multiple content sources, including content from their multichannel provider, the Internet, or other sources."

HTTP iframe is unsupported on HTTPS site. Click here to view iframe in another window

But there was a crucial difference between what the NCTA wanted in 2010 and what the FCC voted to require yesterday. Cable companies didn't want any new rules that would force them to make their content available to makers of third-party set-top boxes and applications. Cable box competition should be achieved by "private sector solutions, not government technology mandates," the letter said.

This letter advocating voluntary solutions came more than two years after Comcast CEO Brian Roberts claimed in a Consumer Electronics Show keynote in 2008 that "the age of the closed, proprietary set-top box is behind us, and the era of an open, two-way cable platform is here." The Verge re-surfaced Roberts' quote in a story this week.

Yet proprietary boxes are still very much a part of consumers' lives, as about 99 percent of US customers rent set-top boxes directly from their providers. (US Senators claimed that customers pay an average of $231.82 a year in rental fees, or $19.5 billion nationwide, though this analysis—and a related one that said set-top box prices have risen far faster than inflation—has been disputed.) CableCard mandates enabled alternative hardware such as TiVo, but the FCC wants a software-based replacement for CableCard that would make it easier for companies to make either third-party hardware or apps that can access cable TV channels.

Yesterday's vote put forth a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that could lead to final rules before the end of the year. The proposal would require pay-TV companies from the cable, telco, and satellite industries to make programming and channel information available to makers of third-party hardware and software without the need for a CableCard.

The NCTA opposed the proposal and was also annoyed that Wheeler brought up that letter from 2010. An NCTA spokesperson e-mailed reporters after the meeting, arguing that Wheeler "ignored" the part of the letter that advocated for "voluntary efforts, not FCC technology mandates."

The NCTA spokesperson also said that the principles the cable industry supported in its 2010 letter "continue to be embraced by the industry." But cable companies want to embrace those principles by making their own apps for third-party set-top boxes and mobile devices, instead of providing TV content and information to anyone who wants to make a competitive navigation device or app.

There's still a lot to be worked out in the FCC's plan. Instead of coming up with its own standard, the FCC said it will require pay-TV companies to make content available to third parties "using any published, transparent format that conforms to specifications set by an independent, open standards body."

Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who voted against the proposal, said that requiring a "theoretical open standards body" composed of "highly disparate actors with highly disparate interests" to agree on an implementation is about as realistic as requiring Jordan, Syria, and Israel to negotiate a Middle East peace.

The FCC proposal would give pay-TV companies two years to comply, and Wheeler is expecting them to figure out a way. The current situation with customers lacking a wide choice of devices on which to watch cable TV channels is unacceptable, he said.

"Innovation is a result of competition, not a result of a forced, 'you must rent this box from me month after month after month,'" Wheeler said.