The National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. has urged the Federal Communications Commission to "correct a number of inaccuracies" in a recent agency report stating that cable prices have been rising, in some cases dramatically.

In a letter sent Thursday to FCC chairman Kevin J. Martin, NCTA prexy-chief Kyle McSlarrow maintained that cable prices have actually gone down.

Shortly after Christmas, the FCC issued its annual cable price survey, which stated that basic cable prices "increased more than 5% last year and by 93% since the period immediately prior to Congress' enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996."

"Expanded basic prices rose more than 6% or twice the rate of inflation last year," survey continued.

"The commission's annual cable price survey is a very limited and crude instrument for collecting information, and it is essentially obsolete in today's dynamic marketplace," McSlarrow said.

"The rate survey's failure to collect data relevant to today's marketplace keeps operators from providing truly useful data because the only pricing information collected comes from rate cards that have little bearing on the real world of discounts and bundling," McSlarrow continued. "The survey focuses predominantly on analog channels in a world where close to half of all customers take digital products, and the survey ignores the obvious consumer benefits of the bundling of high-speed Internet, digital phone and video services."

McSlarrow argued that simply reviewing price changes without accounting for increases in corresponding goods or services is not a true measure of ultimate costs to consumers. The more effective way is to measure price per channel, he said, "and the data clearly show that the real price per channel over 10 years has gone down, not up."

"It adds nothing to the discussion to claim (as the FCC survey did) that per channel measurements are useless unless channels were offered individually," McSlarrow said.

Martin has pushed in the past for cablers to offer a la carte subscriptions.