History
The two phrases, "customer-premises equipment" and "customer-provided equipment", reflect the history of this equipment.
Under the Bell System monopoly in the United States (post Communications Act of 1934), the Bell System owned the phones, and one could not attach one's own devices to the network, or even attach anything to the phones (a popular saying was "Ma Bell has you by the calls"). Thus phones were property of the Bell System, located on customers' premises – hence, customer-premises equipment. In the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proceeding the Second Computer Inquiry, the FCC ruled that telecommunications carriers could no longer bundle CPE with telecommunications service, uncoupling the market power of the telecommunications service monopoly from the CPE market, and creating a competitive CPE market.
With the gradual breakup of the Bell monopoly, starting with Hush-A-Phone v. United States, which allowed some non-Bell owned equipment to be connected to the network (a process called interconnection), equipment on customers' premises became increasingly owned by customers, not the telco. Indeed, one eventually became able to purchase one's own phone – hence, customer-provided equipment.
In the Pay TV industry many operators and service providers offer subscribers a set-top box with which to receive video services, in return for a monthly fee. As offerings have evolved to include multiple services operators have increasingly given consumers the opportunity to rent additional devices like access modems, internet gateways and video extenders that enable them to access multiple services, and distribute them to a range of Consumer Electronics devices around the home.
Read more about this topic: Customer-premises Equipment
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of the prophets. He saw with an open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)