[captioning made possible by bloomberg television] >> live from san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," where we cover innovation, technology and the future of business. i'm emily chang. first, a check of your bloomberg top headlines. it's decision time in the u.s. senate for the keystone x.l. pipeline. the senate has begun voting on whether to move a bill forward that approves construction of the project. the bill, pushed by louisiana democrat mary land drew, ahead of her runoff election needs 60 votes to get through. that number could fall one vote short. president obama is planning action on immigration reform as early as tuesday. immigration is, of course, a key issue in the tech community. the executive order would let four million to five million

undocumented immigrants stay in the united states, according to people familiar with the proposal. this would include undocumented parents of u.s. citizens and permanent legal residents. parents who brought their children into the country illegally wouldn't be included. how dangerous is the economic situation in japan, now that the country has slipped back into a recession for the second time in two years? here's former pimco c.e.o. -- >> i think that number yesterday, the negative 1.6, was a horrible number. now, japan is moving quite quickly. today we got news that not only will they post upon the consumption tax, but we have an election. so there will be an attempt to revamp the economics approach, so that's good news. but the message to the rest of the world is don't get stuck in this general malaise because it's very difficult to get out of. >> the japanese recession may have a big impact on u.s. companies. japan is the fourth largest trading partner of the united states.

boettcher capitalist wants more bitcoin. he tells bloomberg that he plans on bidding again when the u.s. government auctions off 50,000 bitcoins that were seized. he was the winning bidder in the first auction, buying all 30,000 bitcoins. he calls it one of the most important technologies that has come along in his lifetime. to our lead. uber c.e.o. travis k departure from our values and ideals. his duties here at uber do not

involve communication strategy or plans and are not tative in an us now, david kilpatrick, founder and c.e.o. and cory johnson with me here in the studio as well. david, i'll start with you. has uber done enough here? travis has apologized, but it's fallen short of extreme disciplinary action for emile michael. should he be fired? >> my opinion is, it's not really enough. i think he's clearly saying the right things, although it sounds kind of like david plouffe wrote that for him. i think they have a lot of work to do if they want to fundamentally change their image, which he is saying they want to do. they have a very negative image among people like myself, who are professional watchers of technology. certainly sarah lacy agrees. >> now, travis and the rest of the tweet -- it was quite long -- added that i believe folks who make mistakes can learn

from them, myself included. emile michael, meantime, has apologized to sarah lacy directly tweeting, "i would like to apologize to you directly. my comments were wrong and i deeply regret them." sarah hasn't responded directly but has retweeted a few things, including, "not going to cut it." cory? >> first of all, sarah is a woman, duh, she's a mom. some stuff's scary. the notion that the companies that you cover will retaliate with personal investigations or, you know, who knows what that means? we've seen this in the past and it's been terrifying. the company has said they're not doing that. but it's disconcerting and it shows a sort of mentality of you're either with us or against us, of fairness and truth be damned. >> to that point, sarah lacy did publish a piece earlier today before the aapology from travis, saying, "a chill ran down my spine --" this is when

she got the phone call. "i immediately thought of my kids at home halfway around the world just getting out of their baths, groggily pulling on their pajamas and how the new line this company was willing to cross would affect them." serena, you just got off the phone with david floof, the head of marketing and communications now at uber. what did he have to tell you i'm curious, were travis and david in the room when this happened, and how did they react? >> ok. to be sure, it was because of another story i'm working on. but, of course, i asked him, i couldn't resist. and i said, you know, how ironic they bring you onboard to fix their image, and look what they did. what a miss misstep. don't you think uber should fire emile michael? and he wouldn't comment. and then i said, can't you say anything else? am sure you advised travis on his twitter feed. and he said, you know, i stand

by those comments, and to be sure, those tweets were -- the content of those tweets were first emailed internally to all our employees. and i stand by those comments, and we don't have anything else to say for the time being. >> you know, emile michael, who's been on this show, is one of uber's top field guys, if not the top guy. travis, one the most lauded c.e.o.'s right now in silicon valley. david, i'm seeing some hashtags on twitter, "delete uber." but is this really going to affect their business? >> i suspect it won't affect it too much. i wanted to clarify before, when i said about the negative opinion of uber, it's not as a business. it's an extraordinary business, a transformative business. it allowed me to get to the studio on time and there were two other ubers parked outside picking up people at the exact

same moment. this service is what people want. that is going to help them over the long run much more than this will hurt them. but-day think they are the tough guys in tech and they've really done a lot of things ta i think cross lines. i think sarah lacy's piece today was passionate and really eloquent. i think they should read it and give it a lot more thought than they clearly have done up to now. >> sarah lacy called the company morally bankrupt. peter has called it ethically questionable, cory. does it matter? will people stop using ubers because of this? >> do morals and ethics matter? yes, they absolutely matter. and let's put this in context. i mean, there is a "washington post" reporter who's been in solitary confinement in iran for four months. that's a real chilling of journalism. this is on a different level. but this is a level that the companies in silicon valley have rarely gone to. we saw this at hewlett-packard several years ago when they

were secretly capturing the phone numbers that journalists were calling, when they were going through the trash of journalists, trying to figure out who their sources were. some of that was illegal. most of it wasn't. but i think the notion that this company -- anyone who doesn't agree with their business practices or isn't supportive of their business is somehow hurting them, tells you a lot about uber and may affect their ability to partnership. it also may affect journalists. the guy who said this is no dope. he didn't say this knowing there are not journalists in front of him. if you write something negative about me, you better think twice because we're thinking about investigating journalism. maybe this is off the record, maybe i think this is on the record, but regardless, i want the journalists to know you should be scared if you're going to cover uber and say anything negative. it will have the complete opposite reaction. those guys at uber said this about a colleague in the press. they don't like the way this went down. >> i have no idea why somebody would say that to a journalist, the very kind of person who

could make their life miserable. >> let me just suggest -- >> not to mention that uber has all of our personal information and knows where we go and where we are all the time if we're using their service. >> that could be why it was said is to have that chilling effect on the journalism, to make the journalists not write negative things about the company or think twice or shy away from things they might want to report. i think it's going to have the opposite effect. >> exactly. serena, you're a journalist. what effect will this have on you? >> i frankly love this service and i won't change my use of it. but i also think we should put this in perspective. what emil michael said is terrible. but let's not forget that the media is a bubble and knees kind of stories resonate with us much more than they resonate with the rest of the public. a lot of people are going to overlook this story, and i think users will keep on using uber. also, let's not forget they're about to raise a round of

financing and the silence from their investors is actually quite loud. i checked some of the twitter handles of their investors, some of them on the board. they haven't tweeted a word about today's story. and i've written emails to those investors prompting reaction and i got no reaction at all. and i think investors don't care and they'll keep on investing in uber as long as they believe it's a good investment. i think it still is a good investment. this is a cynical view, but i think it's the view that most investors will take on this. >> let's talk about that a little bit more after a quick break. serena of "bloomberg news" in new york, david kilpatrick founder of taconomy we'll be right back talking more about uber coming up.

>> welcome back to "bloomberg west," i'm emily chang.

we are talking about uber and comments made at a dinner by a senior uber executive, suggesting that they would dig up dirt and investigate some of their harshest critics, including journalist, sarah lacy, the founder of pando daly. travis has apologized, and e march il michael, the executive who made the remarks has apologized, but is it enough? i want to bring back in david kilpatrick, and serena, from "bloomberg news" and our editor-at-large, cory johnson. david, i guess i wonder, you see uber making missteps again and again when it comes to public opinion. are they ever going to learn? >> well, this is a company who's even got an aggressive name. they don't seem to have any problem with super uber aggressiveness. i think a lot of their behavior has bordered on thuggish. and this is disgusting behavior that was uncovered today. but in the long run what matters even more is the way

they've intersected with governments with such contempt, and that is something that really ethically they have to work on. they have to recognize however great they think their service is, people have to be -- they have to be willing to work with the community in order to get it to the success that they believe it deserves. >> you know, i was thinking we could call this uber-gate, but it seems like almost every week, corey, there's an uber-gate. as much asomugha i use the service every week, many times a day styles, they continue to make these mistakes. >> david's right. we talked about this in our morning meeting, about how we should cover this story. this is an important story not because i care about sarah lacy, and i do, and the journalist sort of cell pest in a tea pot -- tempest in a teapot, but i think this does reflect their values. it reflects the way, as david mentions, they margin the communities and they say we don't care about your 100-year of tax history laws, we don't care about the drivers who have

families, who have built up a career around providing a service in a certain way. we're not going to try to work with you. we're going to show up in your town, legislate and win this thing for our business and for our customers. the rest of you and your history be damned. i think we also see this in the way that the company said they're going to raise money to try to thwart their competitors from raising money. >> to be clear, he said he warned investors if they were thinking about investing in ift, well, uber was going to raise another round. >> it's not illegal but it's a level of aggressiveness which reflects the way uber sees the world and number two, you don't see this in silicon valley. it crosses the line. >> >> serena, is uber overly aggressive or wrong? >> they're overly aggressive. on this point, they are wrong. this is wrong, threatening reporters is wrong. but they're not the first to do this. authority has always unliked

critical press and they've always threatened. so a lot of authorities have threatened reporters who criticize that authority. so it's not new. it's totally wrong, and they're totally aggressive. but they couldn't be successful at what they're doing if they weren't as aggressive as they are. i mean, i'll go as long as expressing my opinion on the fact that travis, i'm sure he's very sorry about those comments. i also wonder if he had discussed before with emil michael those plans. probably he's not firing him because they had discussed those plans, and now he's shared them with reporters and thinking that nobody would have found out. i don't know how, but -- >> that goes back to my question. if travis and david bloof were in the room, did they say anything? i don't know, i wasn't there. >> they come from a world -- some of them come from a world of d.c., a world of politics, where dirty tricks are well known. that doesn't fly with

journalism. it's not good for society. >> you certainly don't say it in front of journalists, the very people who report on you. ok. that's it. david kilpatrick, thanks so much and serene that. we'll be back after a break.

>> i'm emily chang and this is "bloomberg west." we have breaking news now out of washington, d.c. the senate has just defeated the keystone x.l. pipeline project. though voting continues. peter cook is on capitol hill. peter, we know this is not going to pass. why? >> oh, so close, emily. it looks like they could very likely -- supporters of this project -- get 59 votes in favor of approving the keystone x.l. pipeline, effectively

bypassing the president. they needed 60 votes. we don't have the final tally yet so we don't know how much they fell short, but they could hit as close as 59. a defeat here for mary landrieu, the democratic senator from louisiana, who forced this vote effectively after the election. she's still trying to hold on to her senate seat in louisiana and one of the thoughts here was that by bringing this to the floor, by showing her independence from the president and showing her support for the energy industry in her home state and bringing this bill to the floor just maybe it could help her in that hundredoff election in louisiana. but her efforts and significant efforts on the floor today looks like they're going to fall short and that she's not going to be able to do that. this project, which has been on the drawing board now for six years, remains in a sort of limbo here in washington with the president saying he's going to wait for the environmental review that's happening at the state department for litigation in the state of nebraska to run its course before he makes the ultimate decision along with secretary of state john kerry,

whether or not this project is indeed in the nation's interest. it could still move forward but at this point it's still in limbo. >> peter, does democrat landrieu still distance herself from president obama just by getting this to a vote? >> i think that was the approach all along. it was going to be a heavy lift. there was even the possibility, of course, that had this been successful that the president would have vetoed this legislation and they would have been back to square one. but the goal here politically for mary landrieu was to make this fuss, this case on the floor, show her independence. the indications we get from talking to folks in louisiana is that certainly it hasn't hurt mary landrieu in her runoff election but this won't be enough to push her over the top. she's trailing in that race against bill cassidy. again, this may help. she's pulled out some squeakers in the past. but maybe not enough to do it in this race. december 6 is that election. >> voting is officially over. it has been officially defeated.

59 yeses, one short of the 60 that they needed for this to pass. cory, talk a little bit about why this pipeline is important for louisiana's economy. >> louisiana and the gulf has some of the most important u.s. oil deposits and gas, for that matter, but really oil and it's a state whose future has been decided a lot by the success and the revenues they've derived from the oil business. there was a ton of oil fields, a lot of shallow gulf waters off the coast of louisiana, both shallow and deep-water wells is how people make their money in louisiana. so the political strength of the oil business in louisiana can't be overestimated. it's a big deal politically there, because people believe in the oil business in new orleans, in baton rouge and throughout the state. >> on that note, however, peter, didn't this vote come down to more than -- more concern about the seat and who was going to get that seat, than whether the pipeline would actually exist?

>> certainly this pipeline and the energy industry is a big issue, a big stakeholder in the state of louisiana. both bill cassidy and mary landrieu were in favor of this project. but this had more to do -- the opposition to it had more to do with this pipeline and whether it was in the nation's interest. we heard a lot of arguments on the floor that this pineline would only provide 35 permanent jobs, far fewer than had been advertised by supporters. most of those jobs temporary construction jobs. the argument you heard from barbara boxer and other opponents is that this oil would effectively come from the oil sands of canada, western canada, down through the united states to the louisiana gulf coast to texas, refined -- be refined there and moved elsewhere, other parts of the world. this was not oil that was going to remain in the united states. they made the case. sult of that it was not in the interests of the united states. the opponents held their ground

certainly with the support of environmental groups here in washington today. >> and a lot of this was the lack of efficacy of the oil sands to produce the oil in a clean way, to get it out of the ground cleanly. so much fossil fuel had to be burned to get that oil up. and then to distribute it and put that into use. tom stire, former chairman of fairlawn capital, leading a nationwide political battle against the keystone x.l. pipeline saying that ultimate damage to our society could be enormous and last for hundreds of years and that this is the most important thing to fight as a business, to protect the world from climate change. this pipeline, to encourage the oil sands, could really damage the world irreparably. >> peter, where do we go from here? >> well, we've got, of course, the president could ultimately approve it. but we expect the republican-controlled senate in january will have another vote like this and very likely that will be successful and put the president in the same box to decide whether or not he stands

in the way or whether he waits for the full review process to play out. >> peter cook, our chief correspondent on capitol hill. that keystone x.l. pipeline vote defeated in the senate. more of "bloomberg west" after this quick break.

>> welcome back to "bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. former blackberry c.e.o. has a new job. he left blackberry a year ago after failing to reverse the company's slumping market share. heinz is on to his next challenge, taking over the reins of power mat technologies, an israel-based company that enables wireless harging of mobile devices. earlier betty low sat down with him to speak about the role. >> if you look at communication and what wireless has been going through, we call, you know, we surf the internet, wherever we are, whatever we want to do.

but then actually you get to a point and you say, do i have enough juice in my battery, how do i keep charged, how do i keep going? we still have these places in airports, people looking for power outlets. i think we're on the verge of solving the next big problem of going mobile, by allowing people to wirelessly charge wherever they are waiting, and they just charge their device and we make sure they stay charged. >> they can do it simply and easily and wirelessly, essentially. >> exactly, no wires, no chargers needed. put it on a table, put it on a surface, it has charging capability and here you go. >> it's a great invention. it's also one of the frustrations, though, i think of the investors previously, where they felt like this company had such a big market potential, but generating very little revenue. seemed like it wasn't able to sort of grow to that next level. how are you going to take powermat to the next level? what are you going to do?

>> that's a good observation. start-ups go through these various phases of inventing something, changing direction, changing courses. it's never a straight line. >> right. >> which also makes it fun. >> blackberry was by far not a start-up when you took it over. >> not quite. >> i've always wanted to know, looking back on the years or the time that you were at blackberry, do you regret anything? is there anything that you would redo again at blackberry? >> first and foremost, i don't regret the time at all, right? it was very exciting when i started. we built a smartphone portfolio, blackberry invented it. we rose the revenue to above $10 billion. that was lots of fun. and then things get hotter. but you stick to the company, right? you stick to what you need to do. but the last two years, frankly, were quite rough, to put it mildly. but somebody had to do this. we had to save that company, right? we had to put it in a whole different context. very dramatic, strategic

changes in terms of the business model and the related r&d programs. if you look back, it's always 20/20 hindsight. at that point in time, i think we were under huge pressure, with an excellent team. what we really did was we laid the groundwork on all these different programs, like the blackberry cloud, the blackberry messenger cross-platform that now the new management team can execute upon. i wish them all the best and all the success, that these platforms carry them into the future and that they actually really manage to turn that company around. >> do you think they're doing a good job? >> yeah, from what i can tell. it's not on me to judge him, right? this is not what my position is. but in terms of what i see from execution, you know, what his team is doing, i think they're continuing that path on a very disciplined execution. so, again, fingers crossed that they're going to make it. >> you mentioned earlier that the last two years were pretty

rough. what were people not understanding, perhaps, or that you felt like were the toughest moment for you at blackberry? >> in order to change the business model of blackberry, we would have to separate the services from the handset. the original business model was you get the best feed, the recurring feed. in order to become an enterprise player and get flexibility in handsets, we had to break this up. sounds easy, but it really was a whole new strategy of how you build a product and enterprise. i think the best time i could say was not well understood or not well communicated. but that actually was the crucial element of the strategy that i laid out and that we executed against. >> where do you think blackberry has the biggest opportunity, in enterprise or emerging markets or in software? >> clearly blackberry in my view has a play in enterprise. it's the most secure platform, it's the most modern operating

system, mobile operating system out there, the most secure one. that gives blackberry room to explore even things way beyond just handsets or enterprise. think about this topic we all talk about, the internet of things, right, or the internet of everything. that business will need what blackberry has. you ant all those sensors and things to be secure. guess who is the most secure on the planet on this one? i think the team is executing. they're doing what they need to do. >> what about the blackberry classic? >> yeah, the blackberry classic really goes back to the lovers of the original blackberry. >> would you buy it? >> no. i bought a passport. >> you bought a passport, ok. just on a final note, i know during the last few years that you were at blackberry, a lot of talk about selling the company, right, whether it remains independent or is to be sold. given how it's slowly being turned around, should it still be for sale, or perhaps give

blackberry a bit more chance to grow as an independent company? >> i can't really give advice on that. after one year i'm probably too distant from that. i mean, it's a decision that the management and the board will have to make, and i'll watch it. but it's not for me to give any direction or any advice here to the company and the board. they will do the right thing. >> so it sounds like you're still a blackberry loyalist, then. >> absolutely. >> no iphones? >> to iphone, no other thing, it's blackberry. >> former blackberry c.e.o. and ewly appointed powermat c.e.o. thorsten heins. we'll take you inside a company that says it's come up with a neat substitute that tastes and feels like the real thing next.

>> i'm emily chang and this is "bloomberg west." with 2014 winding down, bloomberg business week sam got a look at the technologies and invovations that may disrupt our lives in 2015. today we're talking alternatives to meat. the biggest complaint about imitation meat is not only the taste, but also the texture. one company says, however, it has found a solution. his is the year ahead. >> if you think about meat, it has to come from chickens, cows and pigs. there's so much efficiency you can get out of the system, so we need to think about it differently. i'm nathan brown, the founder and c.e.o. of beyond meats. and we want to create meat directly from plants. >> people have attempted to make imitation meat out of plants, but the appeal of those products has been limited because, well, the imitation has never been that convincing. >> what is meat?

i think about it from the perspective of what's in meat? lipids, amino acids, carbohydrates and water, none of which have exclusive residents in the animal. they're abundant in plants. so we're extracting them from plants and' assembling in the architect of animal protein or muscle and by doing that, providing meat directly from plants. >> so what makes beyond meat different from predecessors is instead of trying to take a product like tofu and pass it off as chicken, it's figuring out what makes chicken chicken, and rebuilds it from the molecular level. you might think that key to creating a convincing imitation of meat is getting the taste just right, and flavor is important. but it turns out it's not the most important thing. >> when i think about the single most important innovation that we were able to create it gets back to the texture. it dates back to our familiarity with animal protein, with that feeling on the teeth. >> they're able to create this unique texture through a

combination of heating, cooling, and pressurizing the proteins naturally found in plants. >> i'm going to try some of this chicken. >> all right. >> the texture is really the key here. you get that feeling of -- you use that word fibrous. >> right. >> stringy in a good way. >> without the structure, without the fiber, you're not going to get that mainstream penetration. >> ethan's company is currently selling two kinds of plant-based meats, chicken strips and ground beef. both are designed to miss with other ingredients, which makes their job as passing as animal-based meat easier. 2015 will be a make-or-break year for beyond meat. the company is preparing its next product, one that aims right at the heart of meat-eaters -- a burger. that's a way taller order than some chili. but they think they have an edge. once you start rebuilding meat from the ground up, you can do more than just make a facsimile of it.

you can actually make it better. >> so what you're having right now has more protein than beef. it has more iron than steak, ore omegas than salmon, more antioxidants with blueberries. >> it's super meat. >> then the question becomes, are we eventually going to see a meatless future? >> i don't think it's necessarily realistic to think that people will stop consuming meat. i think if you look at human health, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, these epidemics we have, they are correlated with meat consumption, if you look at greenhouse gaseses, i can make an impact by changing out the amino acids in the center of the dinner plate, and that's really exciting. >> for decades meat alternatives have been stuck in the health food ghetto. beyond meat hopes to break out of that, not by converting all of us to veganism and not by magiccally creating an entire steak but judging us to

plant-based alternatives. if they're right, if you can't tell the difference between, say, chicken and beyond meat chicken and their product is better for you and the environment, the company is betting its future on the hope that you are about to become much more of a vegetarian than you planned. >> hmm. "business week" sam grow bart there. be sure to tune into the year ahead special airing tonight on bloomberg tv. we will look at 10 innovations that will change everything you know about tech, food and medicine. well, arguably no federal agency finds itself more in the hot seat than the federal communications commission. the head of the national cable and telecommunications association and former chairman of the f.c.c., michael powell, joins us next on "bloomberg west."

12k3w4r welcome back to "bloomberg west." i'm emily chang. the decision on whether the government will allow comcast to buy time warner cable is right around the corner. c.e.o. brian roberts, c.e.o. of comcast told reporters in san francisco last week that the company is full steam ahead with the acquisition, even as president obama came out against the idea of internet fast lanes, which could benefit companies like comcast. our editor-at-large, cory johnson, takes a look at the

lobbying efforts comcast has made trying to push the deal through. >> in washington there's lobbying and then there's lobbying. the $44 billion proposed merger between comcast and time warner cable is an exercise in lobbying. comcast has spent $18 million in lobbying last year. that's more than any other company for a defense contractor. a lot of that money went straight into the campaign covers of politicians. $37,000 to mitch mcconnell. $27,000 to mark udahl. $27,000 to greg walden. $25,000 to harry reid. ut the real power in washington -- take this guy, a former navy seal. he's the c.e.o. of comcast cable but also the chairman of the national cable and telecommunications association. the ncta gave him $19 million 870,000 in lobbying last year,

much of it going to the same politicians that comcast contributed to. that made it the top five lobbyists in all of washington, d.c. last year, and before smith, chairman of the ncta was tom wheeler. where is he now? well, president obama named him the chairman of the f.c.c., the very body that will decide the fate of this proposed merger. and for anyone at the fcc thinking about their next job, former chairman of the f.c.c., michael powell, he's now the c.e.o. of another company. she left the f.c.c. to go to comcast as their chief lobbyist. she's one of 107 lobbyists who are trying to use all of comcast's power, influence and money to urge washington to accept this deal. >> cory johnson is in the newsroom now with ncta president and former f.c.c. chairman, michael powell.

cory, take it away. >> michael powell joins me right now. we're talking about this notion going back and forth, going from government to go to the private sector. the private sector informed by that, so is government. when people look at that and they see the numbers going back and forth in terms of lobbying, they're concerned. should they be? >> you should always be concerned to make sure the government is operating ethically. i think it gets overstated by simplistic looks. you know, i left f.c.c. for six years before i ever entertained a job in the industry. i had not only an ethical obligation, but a personal choice not to do any work for companies that i regulated for many decades. i'm a policy expert. i spend my life making my career in the communications sector association it's pretty legitimate to ultimate -- so it's pretty legitimate to have employment in that sector. >> is it so complicated that when the f.c.c. is looking for someone they've got to go to

tom wheeler to hire him, because he has so many close ties, who's been paid so much money, whatever that is, by the industry? >> well, you'll have to ask the president of the united states what goes into his choice. >> i'd much rather talk to you. >> tom wheeler, to his credit, was in the ncta trade business 30 years ago. is there a statute of limitations on when you can return to public service? i think the country needs qualified talented, in-depth public servants and i applaud the president for looking for someone who had that background. he was widely heralded when the selection was made as somebody who had a deep understanding of this material and i would argue, yes, it is complicated. >> talk to me about the membership companies and what they want out of the ncta, companies like comcast, time warner cable and so on. what do they want out of, in particular, this ruling about net neutrality? >> so, first of all, you should understand our membership is diverse and somewhat by intention of itself. we have operators, companies

like comcast, time warner and charter, we also have via come, disney and cox. >> who's giving you most of the money? you may have a long list of the members, but is most of the money from one side? >> our dues are rated by subscriptions. so it's obvious that bigger members play a disproportionate amount of the dues. i don't think that alone buys you direct influence over the choices the association makes. we're a trade association. i'd be the first to confess, yes, we lobby. but we manage an enormous amount. the trade shows, the industry's development of public policy, we represent the industry like i'm doing today in the media. we sometimes are doing the legal work for filings at the federal communications commission or other arms of government so there is a wider array of things we do. i personally, for example, spends very little time on the hill and direct contact with members. that's not a big part of what i do in my job.

>> on this issue of comcast, net neutrality, they gave us a statement. i want to read from it. they say we continue to believe that section 706 as opposed to title 2, provides more than ample authority to impose rules. come cast and cable companies have led the broadband revolution. there's a big debate, title 2, which would make sort of a public utility out of the companies that give us our internet, whether we're businesses or consumers, versus the existing regulations. what do you think? >> i think it's a perfect example where the means start confusing the end. i've never seen an issue where there's such violent agreement on the core objectives. everybody wants to stop blocking. everybody wants to prevent throttling. most of our companies have said repeatedly publicly they have no interest in paid prioritization. in fact, for 20 years without any net neutrality rule they haven't engaged in the practice even a handful of times that the commission can point to. and everybody is in support of increased transparency. when you get into the legal

minutia about the most effective way to do that and that's when you get to this debate. >> heavy regulation, and wheeler's plan in-between. >> our greatest concern about title two is the unintended consequences of what else comes with it. title two is a body of regulations, most heavy body of commentary regulation that exists in the country. it was built for at&t as a monopoly during the last century. it's 1,000 pages in length. it has hundreds and hundreds of rules that would make fundamentally no sense when applied to internet infrastructure. and the government can't, to our satisfaction, sort of give you the confidence that it would rule wisely in the administration of those unintended -- >> i just look at the -- we have really slow internet speed in this country compared to a lot of big countries with big businesses and big geographic footprints and a lot of countries with smaller geographic footprints. compared to france, we have

slower speed. south korea, more or less half of speed they've got. doesn't the current structure reward companies for not investing so we don't have that kind of competition? >> i don't think so first of all, i could cherry-pick countries to compare to, too, and the united states would look outstanding. of the top 16 regions comparable by size, six to nine of them are united states, actual state jurisdictions. so we're a country of 300-plus million people. a more complex problem. look at the trend line. fees have increased 1500% in a decade. the network doubles in speed every 18 to 4 months. right now we're increasing speed 50% annually. >> michael powell, i wish we had a lot more time. thanks for coming on the show. michael powell, the president and c.e.o. of the ncta. emily? >> all right, cory johnson, thanks so much. thank you all for watching this edition of "bloomberg west." all the latest headlines all the time on your phone and tablet, bloomberg.com and bloomberg radio.

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