Michael Powell, Top Cable Lobbyist, Argues Against Broadband as Utility

America’s infrastructure is crumbling, says former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell, the chief executive of the cable industry’s trade association.

Roads are in poor condition, bridges are structurally deficient, drinking water systems are near the end of their useful life and portions of the electric grid suffer regular blackouts. All of which, Powell says, proves that the country’s broadband networks cannot be considered a public utility and left in the hands of government oversight.

“Because the Internet is not regulated as a public utility, it grows and thrives, watered by private capital and a light regulatory touch,” Powell said in Los Angeles at the Cable Show, the annual meeting of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. “It does not depend on the political process for its growth, or the extended droughts of public funding,” Powell said. “This is why broadband is the fastest deploying technology in world history, reaching nearly every citizen in our expansive country.”

Powell’s remarks were in response to recent calls for the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify high-speed Internet service as a “common carrier,” a public utilitylike network that should be subject to strict regulation.