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Powell: Who cares?
As America continues to face further declines in its broadband speed ranking, reporters looking for answers to how the cable industry plans to do better got a direct answer this week from Michael Powell, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and current president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the country’s largest cable lobbying trade group.
Question: Can you respond to studies that have found the United States trailing many countries in terms of the speeds of Internet services offered to consumers?
Powell’s answer: “I live in the United States of America. It doesn’t matter to me what they’re doing in Lithuania.”
Lithuanian broadband is today ranked 15th fastest in the world by Ookla’s Net Index, with average download speeds of 36.22Mbps. The United States is ranked 32nd with 20.17Mbps; Canada is ranked 39th with 18.8Mbps.
Of course the “cable” industry doesn’t care about falling behind on broadband speeds. As long as the programmers can still force feed us Honey Boo Boo, Kim Kardashian, Snooki and JWWOW everything is all fine and dandy in the cable industry.
Is there context to this though? Did he say anything besides I don’t care? Was there a follow-up question better defining what the reporter was really asking?