FCC wants more companies making cable boxes

NEW YORK (AP) — The government wants to make it easier for you to buy and use cable boxes from companies other than your cable provider.

This could help companies like TiVo, Roku and Apple deliver a cable feed, too, as part of their video recorders or streaming-TV devices.

Introducing competition could also help lower people's cable bills. The Federal Communications Commission says that 99 percent of cable and satellite TV customers rent boxes from their cable providers, and that the price of cable boxes has nearly tripled since 1994. Meanwhile, prices of common consumer electronics like cellphones, TVs and computers have fallen sharply. The FCC says the average U.S. household pays $231 a year to rent a cable box.

FCC commissioners will vote on the proposal Feb. 18. That would kick off a process of writing new rules, which will likely take several months.

The rules would be meant as a successor to CableCard, which lets consumers get a card from their cable companies and stick it into another box like a TiVo. CableCards were supposed to free consumers from cable boxes, but it wasn't very popular.