National Cable & Telecommunications Association President Michael Powell defended managed services in a C-SPAN interview this week, 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 Multichannel News. 

He said that cable should absolutely be allowed to deliver managed services. "We spent multiple decades building a private proprietary infrastructure" to deliver that managed, specialized service. 

He said to say cable companies ought not to be able to offer 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."

He said 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. "The reason that your cable channel doesn't glitch or cache or pixilate or can be high definition is because it can be highly prioritized and managed."

He said that unless cable itself should not exist as a private service, then one has to at least concede that managed services have consumers-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 talked extensively about network neutrality. That included defending FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler against suggestions he was trying create fast and slow lanes with his new net neutrality rules, which Powell called a complete distortion. "The chairman is not proposing that we should have fast lanes," said Powell, himself a former chairman. "He is dealing with the boundaries of the law as interpreted by the court, and I think he personally is trying to create the strongest net neutrality rule he can within the parameter of what the law provides."

The FCC's old rules prevented unreasonable discrimination, but a court found that a ban was too much like common carrier regs, so Wheeler is flipped that to be allowing "commercially reasonable" discrimination, but also signaled that is basically a way to get at the same limits on discrimination and have it be sustainable in court.

That said, Powell said he was perplexed by the fast lanes" charge. He said he isn't even sure what it is, and that whatever it is, he has talked to his members and, as far as he can tell, nobody is contemplating creating one. "I believe this issue has blown beyond the proportion of our actual incentives and interests."

He said cable operators would be "crazy" to do some of the things people are suggesting, and that the fight was not really about network neutrality. He said NCTA supported the last rules and was sure they would support the next ones "depending on how they come out." That caveat has mostly to do with Title II, which NCTA would not support were that to be the justification for the rules.

He also pointed out the old rules are now part of cable ops terms of service. (Unless those terms of service are changed, that means the rules are also legally enforceable by the Federal Trade Commission according to some rule watchers.).

But Powell made it clear that support stops when Title II enters the picture. "For one rule we are not going to support radically transforming the regulatory model to Title II," he said, which would reclassify Internet access as a telecom service. Powell said that was like using a chainsaw, sledgehammer and bulldozer to tackle one part of one rule--the anti-unreasonable discrimination portion of the Open Internet order (the no-blocking rule is not really at issue, and the court left the transparency rule alone).

He said the benefits of that approach are essentially nil, while the risks are monumental. He called Title II "about the only thing we're in the mood to really be fighting over."

He called it "radically disastrous" for the country, and something that would "certainly damage our businesses and I think would hurt consumers much worse than people generally understand and Web companies more than they understand." That "hurt" includes raising rates (mandatory USF fees), and removing the Federal Trade Commission's oversight over privacy and other consumer protections.

Powell said he could also easily see a range of innovative services getting tangled up in that regime.

Powell said that Title II would increase the cost of regulatory compliance, which would then shrink investment in growth. "So, if you like your Internet speed today, sadly you might have to get used to it because I think the investment needed to grow it will shrink.

He said the market was already reacting negatively to the "overhang" of Title II. "Telecom stocks in them most booming stock market in world history right now are down because of threat of Title II."

When two guys who have held the same job sit down to compare experiences, the talk can be fascinating.  When they have two jobs in common, their shared experiences can be even more dramatic - especially if the jobs are high-profile roles such as FCC chairman and NCTA president.

So when Tom Wheeler and Michael Powell sit down to gab on stage on the second day of the Cable Show later this month, the dialog could take some good turns.  They can't spend much time comparing tales about their private toilets at either office or how they scratched their initials into the respective desks.  Powell's NCTA office is in a different building than the one where Wheeler sat in the early 1980s. Powell, as the first FCC chairman to serve his entire term at the then-new building near the Potomac River where Wheeler now sits, probably didn't deface his new government-issue furniture.

Whatever they say, they'll have to talk quickly. Right now the plan for the Wheeler-Powell on-stage discussion is for the current FCC chairman to deliver a speech and then sit down briefly to chat with Powell.  Despite Washington's notorious revolving doors, this appears to be the first time a regulator-in-chief  and top lobbyist have ever held both jobs, so their conversation augurs historic insights.     

They could discuss pole attachments, a big topic in the late 1970s and early 1980s during Wheeler's NCTA tenure and now coming back into the spotlight as Google Fiber begins seeking aerial space. They probably won't delve deeply into pricing, although it's a perennial question - even more so today with escalating subscription prices fueled by program costs.

Wheeler and Powell may explore the cable industry's differences during their respective NCTA years. It would be fascinating to hear how Wheeler reflects on the dynamics of running an association that represented an industry (circa 1980) with about 5,000 cable systems reaching 14 million homes, barely a 20% of U.S. households back then. That's a fraction of today's numbers, although actual ownership parties are likely fewer.

Back in the early '80s, cable systems only delivered video, although some pioneering projects - in which Wheeler was later involved - experimented with data services. 

Powell might bring up content regulation, although the industry he currently represents faces vastly different  programming issues than in Wheeler's era, when regulatory remnants remained that restricted the time frames/"windows" in which new movies could run on pay TV channels.  Wheeler is likely to discuss competition and consolidation, topics that have arced since the '80s and, with today's hot topics such as Aereo and Comcast/Time Warner Cable now top of mind. We know how Powell will respond.

The audience might be intrigued (or amused) if Wheeler and Powell talk politics, given their differing party orientations. They could reflect on the people who held each job in the periods between each man's  terms at the FCC and NCTA, or more significantly, the policy routes that were taken by Chairmen Martin, Genachowski and Clyburn or NCTA presidents such as James Mooney, Decker Anstrom, Robert Sach and Kyle McSlarrow.  

I began pondering in January how a public Wheeler-Powell chat would go. Then I had an unexpected peek  during Wheeler's chatty, candid conversation with  American Cable Association president Matt Polka on stage at the ACA policy summit a few weeks ago.  Wheeler mentioned several times that he had sat in Polka's chair as president of a cable lobbying group, mostly in reference to the need to determine and identify how policy-makers would behave.

Wheeler's open declaration of his cable lobbyist background was no surprise, but put a spotlight on his mind-set just days after the controversial FCC ruling that he pushed to smack down broadcasters' joint sales agreements and siding with cable on retransmission consent deals.

Sunday's Washington Post profile of Wheeler  stressed his candor and comfort discussion his long lobbying career.

Although Powell and Wheeler historically have cable in common, current decisions focus more in digital businesses: cloud, wireless, broadband economics.  During Powell's FCC era, Internet realities were just falling into place, often very awkwardly.   Now Wheeler has to implement (or repair) policies created a decade ago.

The two chairman/president colleagues have plenty of notes to compare.  Including the truth about what they really did scratch into each others' desks.

Gary Arlen examines digital technology and policy from Arlen Communications. Reach him at www.Arlencom.com