The US Federal Communications Commission is pondering whether it should enforce the 70/70 rule for cable companies, a part of the Cable Communications Act of 1984. The "70/70 rule" states that when 70 percent of all United States households have access to cable and 70 percent of those households get their television from the cable the FCC gains broad regulatory powers.

However, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association scrambled to prevent any such initiative. They allege that the current numbers aren't even close to those required for the 70/70 rule. "Every independent analysis of the marketplace shows that cable serves less than 70 percent of the nation's households and even the FCC staff concluded last year that cable was well short of this threshold," said a statement issued by the cable industry association.

One of the rules which would be activated if the provisions of the 70/70 rule should kick in is that any cable company must reach less than 30 percent of households. This would encourage smaller companies and effectively prevent the formation of monopolies.

"Twisting statistics in order to breathe life into this rule is simply another attempt to justify unnecessary government intrusion into a marketplace where competition is thriving and new technology is providing consumers more choices, better programming and exciting new interactive services," Kyle McSlarrow, president of National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said in a statement.

Moreover, the FCC also wants to force cable operators to cut the price they charge to lease spare channels to programmers, according to a source quoted by Reuters. FCC's move is sure to please anti-consolidation groups such as Media Access Project, (MAP) which has pushed the FCC to invoke the rule, saying the cable industry has become sufficiently dominant.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin said to Washington Post that while in very other industry regulated by the FCC, there have been significant decreases in the price of services, cable rates have gone up almost 100 percent over the past decade.