Powell: Cable Is Already A Managed Service

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National Cable & Telecommunications Association president Michael Powell defended managed services, saying that over 80% of the cable pipe currently is dedicated to delivering such a managed service: "It's called cable."

Powell was interviewed for C-SPAN's Communicators series, a copy of which was supplied to B&C/Multi. He said that cable should absolutely be allowed to deliver managed services and to prohibit cable companies from offering managed services over that pipe is tantamount to "confiscation of our business. It is essentially the argument that you should demand as a matter of law that you take away our private service and put it in the public domain."

Powell added that cable only uses a portion of that pipe for the public Internet, but that the majority goes to other services that the cable industry develops. He said that unless cable itself should not exist as a private service, then one has to at least concede that managed services have consumer-benefitting purposes.

"We are not government owned rights of way," he said. "We built our infrastructure with purely private capital to sell a service to the American public, and I think the government has to be careful not to suggest that, even for a public purpose, that somehow you can remove those services and repurpose them for something that a regulator might prefer to see them used for."


Powell: Cable Is Already A Managed Service