We are starting to hear undercurrents of complaint about the merger between Arris and Pace, and think it’s time we addressed the issue. It appears that the Justice Department’s request for more information on the deal was brought about by US cable companies crying foul and suggesting that their life will be hell without Pace to fall back on. Historically this may well have been true. In the 2000 timeframe Motorola held a lock-in with its Mediacipher conditional access, which was used as an excuse to foist underperforming, expensive devices onto all the US cable companies, the majors included. Three clear initiatives came to their rescue back then, and Pace was involved in perhaps the more complicated of these three.…