Prepared Remarks Of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler at NCTA - INTX 2015

You are no longer the "cable" industry. You are the leading association of leading broadband providers...You don't have a lot of competition, especially at the higher speeds that are increasingly important to the consumer of online video...More competition would be better. That is why we granted the preemption petitions filed by two communities that wished to expand their gigabit networks into surrounding areas, including where people had no broadband at all....By bringing competitive alternatives to television viewers, this industry did just that -- and the video business was changed forever. Then your industry went on to upgrade, compete with the telecommunications companies, and dominate broadband. Now the question is whether consumers will have competitive alternatives for broadband. To harken backto what you did before, will you now plant a flower in the competitive broadband desert?

It is time to look forward, not backward. This is not the time to dwell on the reasons why both the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice reached the conclusion that the proposed [Comcast/Time Warner Cable] transaction would not be in the public interest. But it is important to understand that the tipping point from cable to broadband came while the transaction was under review....We recognized that broadband had to be at the center of our analysis, and that video was, in essence, an application that flows over networks and that could be supplied both by the owners of facilities and by competitors that use broadband pathways to compete against the owners of those broadband pathways...Michael Powell told Congress that "cable broadband providers are unequivocally committed to building and maintaining an open Internet experience." We welcome that pledge. Maintaining, improving, and protecting the broadband transmission system is the right thing to do. America depends on it.