NCTA’s Powell: TV's Golden Age Is Set Against Tarnished Regulations

National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell said his testimony about the future of video will focus on three things: 1) cable's golden age is now; 2) technology is driving choice, removing friction points between cable and consumers including set-tops, navigation; and 3) the cable industry is not trying to thwart over-the-top video.

Given those, he says, it is time to take a fresh look at regulations that are premised on either a concentrated, vertically-integrated monopolist model of cable that is not true today, or on subsidizing broadcasters and protecting them from competition. Whether those should continue to be the national judgments on those services "is worth some reconsidering by Congress," he says.