New sources of revenue. I think theyre attacking both of those things, but to focus on the revenue side. I think, one, looking for new ways to delight and hold consumers. So if you look at comcast and its investment in the x1 platform, if you can make video on demand more attractive, easier to use, the interfaces more weblike and more delightful, number one, dont lose what you have, right . Innovate, keep what you have. You also see them taking advantage of broadband, right . That is a blessed source of new Business Opportunity for our industry. It is growing much faster. It still has a huge addressable market. It has good economics, and its a good business. The rapid change in telecommunications, Technology Advances and the future of the cable industry with National Cable and Telecommunications Association president Michael Powell tonight at 8 ian on the communicators on 8 eastern on the communicators on cspan2. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies 5 years ago 35 be years ago an
Satellite provider. And michael pollen, welcome back to the the communicators. Before we start with the issues, lets start with the Washington Post article from this weekend. It was an Internet Survey report they did saying that well over half of people say they abandoned their Cable Company if they could because of service. What is your response to that . Guest oh, is that a question . The first thing i would say is i think Infrastructure Companies provide these services are well aware of their longstanding challenges with the consumer and i think they have a duty and obligation to work hard to improve services. Bui think there is something somewhat challengine which is software, in the cloud, we are still a business that has to come in your home. We are still a business that has to install hardware and it has to function 310 hours a month which is what the average c consumer watches. It hasnt evolved for many years. Those problems need to be fixed. But i think the pain points lead to
Sure we will have a debate on the issues going forward. Questions . I am a longtime member of the club. Very impressive personality. An honorary southeastern citizen. Your question, please . On the five mystical things would you please respond to the senator five mystical things. Thank you very much. They were not mystical they were mystical. I have to say i cant write them all down. It has stymied negotiations at least from my perspective. The disagreement as whether or not part of disagreements or deaths of votes we will have additional revenue contribution achieved by closing some of the tax breaks. Reducing some of the tax expenditures. Mentioned some symbols, and i urge all of you to take a look , some symbols called for more revenue. Then the president s budget. I am glad a lot of our colleagues have embraced the framework and balanced, but sometimes they leave out the fact that some symbols concluded additional revenues concluded from the tax report. They have tax reform, but al
Right now we have a lot of heat. We have people using this for political purposes. If thats the way we in the United States and our close partners in europe come up with legislation, we will get it exactly wrong. At the wilson center, you are going to be doing a conference in about two days time on the post snowden period. One of the features we have seen on this, we have individual countries talking about walling off parts of their internet. Part of the exactly wrong. That was part of my question. What is the actual danger if that happens to intelligence gathering and also Internet Freedom . Lets start with edward snowden. Im hopeful is in 15 minutes are almost up. I thought his interview the other night was extremely revealing of is incredible personal arrogance and misguided approach to all this. Hes not a real whistleblower. It would be nice if there was evidence. It would be nice if the nsa could put out this pathetic email chain earlier. His actions moving first to china and russ
So from the standpoint of eliminating that possibility that there was in this case a conus in the United States connection, i think thats another important attribute of section 215. Thank you. General alexander, under current law when one of these socalled mistakes occurs that you refer to in your testimony, i believe you said they were somewhat less than 3000 of them had occurred, that the current law requires at the immediate report those to the fisa court, which you do. The current law does not require that the report those mistakes congress. But you do so on your own. And i assume you have no objection to us changing the law to mandate that nsa report both to the fisa court, the administration, as well as the congress for any of those instances that might occur . I personally have no objection, senator, to that. I think it makes sense. I would just add that both 2776 include executive orders and fisa court your so its all the possible areas we make across all our authorities. Only