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>> more debate on the immigration bill. >> this week "the communicators" is at the cable show in washington, d.c. where we interview leaders of two of the nation's largest communications companies. >> host: and we're pleased to be joined here at the cable show by brian roberts who is the chair and ceo of the comcast corporation. mr. roberts, what did comcast unveil? >> guest: well, we call it x2, and it's a kind of a next entertainment operating system. so all these years we've had a cable box in your house, and the innovation is dependent on what that cable box can do. the last 18 months we've sort of had an aha moment which was when the technology allowed itself to move most of the brains of the box, like everything else in our society, to the cloud. and we have to have a really

fast connection. so if you change channels, the cloud could keep up with you, and you wouldn't know the difference. because as a consumer you don't care how we do it, you just want it to be faster to the content you like, learn your preferences so you're not doing the same thing every time and be fun and easy and intuitive and beautiful and elegant. so we unveiled x2, and everything from being able to talk into the remote and say find basketball movies, movies on basketball, and next thing you know, boom, there's 20 choices. or find don cheadle, the actor, and it not only would find movies he's in, television shows, but also web videos. click, watch and enjoy. so it learns your preferences, it makes it easier to find on demand content, it makes your dvr recordings easier to get. it's just better, more information. we have rotten tomatoes ratings

with every movie and twitter buzz on every tv show, realtime changing. and our whole company culture is evolved to really trying to be technology, innovation, new products. there's a buzz in the company and a vibe that i'm really proud, anding it was fun to unveil it today. we'll have it out laterrer this year. >> host: you said television will change more in five years than in the last 50. what are some examples of that? >> guest: well it's really, well, take on demand. we started with some content on a tv set. we now have 40,000 shows on demand, 30 million downloads on demand in ten years. where does that want to go? it wants to go to tablets and phone, and we want to be able to integrate the web as well as tv, as well as ratings and twitter and facebook and social media.

it's just exploding because of the technology options we have as consumers, and different generations of consumers have different passions, so we've got to keep it really simple. it's way more complicated, and we have to recognize we're not all the same. so why do we give one experience? take the program guide, rather than six guides, there's one -- rather than one guide, six guides. one just for kids, one for sport, one for movies. take the kids, do you have a preschool ager or a 10-year-old? and we work with common sense media so apartments know if -- parents know if they click kid shows, if you want to set your guide, you can just have that information available for a conversation with your kids. if you want to take youring home product which in our case is cameras and home security and energy management and lighting control and you want to do that right there with one click of

your remote while you're watching tv right on the worntle you can do that too. you couldn't do any of that years ago, and that's the kind of change we're excited about. >> host: mr. roberts, we're here in washington. a lot of discussion right now about the issue of cyber privacy, increased use of the cloud, new technology. where does that fall in the comcast world as far as -- >> guest: well, the cable industry has a very specific privacy law that was way ahead of its time that is one of the highest privacy standards of any industry way more than the web and the cloud and other things. so first thing is we operate by the cable act. and so there's great comfort in that. two, all the things, personalization recommendations, if you want to opt out of that, you can easily do that with one click as well. but i think it's a huge conversation. very important that we know what's happening to our data. in our case we don't ever take

it and do something about you. that's not our business model. and so i think it's an advantage for us to try to remind people that it's a safe place. at the same time, a number of customers are showing that they want, you know, another generation is very comfortable with the transparent, you know, every picture, every image it's okay, put it out there about me, um, that's not how many of us grew up. and so making sure that generation has the ability to say i want this to learn and be smarter and be just for me, and i'm okay with a different band of privacy than others. so i think it's a conversation that's very relevant. we want to be a part of that conversation. i think it should touch all industries more evenly. it shouldn't be one industry with one set of rules, another industry with another set of rules. it should be the same for all of us as consumer, and we welcome being part of that dialogue.

>> host: has the nsa been a part of comcast at all like we've seen with the disclosures with verizon? >> guest: we get a lot of subpoenas for our customer records and things, but i don't think anything different than what we've read and probably not quite at the same, the same level. >> host: one other issue. john mccain has introduced or talked about, again, his a la carte cable legislation. what's your message to john mccain? >> guest: well, i don't think that we would have the diversity of channels, i don't think there would be a c-span if people would literally just buy one channel at a time. i don't think most americans -- and yet how many americans are aware of c-span and have come upon it? and so, you know, if you buy a newspaper, you can't say i don't want the business section. buy a magazine, you may not read every article. you know, there's many businesses that give you a lot of choices.

should we have more packaging flexibility and options for consumers? that's something we are hopeful and have worked on. we've got more packages than ever before. and finally, is this the government's role, or is it a negotiation between content companies and distributers? but, and my view is that this is best served in the business relationships, not in government laws and mandates. but, you know, we're very respectful. it's an important subject and one that we want to, again, be part of that dialogue. >> host: and finally, mr. roberts, comcast is an operator, distributer, broadcaster, creator. are there conflicts in some of those business models at times? >> guest: of course. but i think we have a unique, special company, and it's never been more evident than at this show. we're at the cross-section of media and technology. there's no company quite with all the potential for innovation. some of the things we talked about, solving some of the

problems, leading on whether it's privacy or choices for consumers or ease of using remote and getting to content you want, having it on all the devices, and at times that's what management, you know, has to manage. but everybody in our place is pulling in the same direction. we're a global company. we transformed ourselves. my father started the company literally 50 years ago this year, and i think we're pretty proud, he's pretty proud at where we're at and where we, hopefully, are going. >> host: brian roberts is chairman and ceo of the comcast corporation. so we want to introduce you to rob marcus who is president and chief operating officer of time warner cable. mr. marcus, if you could start by giving us a snapshot of time warner cable; size, customers, etc. >> guest: right. time warner cable is, i think we're the second largest cable operator in the u.s. today.

we have about 15 million total customers, residential and business services which is a relatively new area of our business. it's ors in fact, the fastest growing part of our business. people tend to think of us as being providers of video, data and voice to consumers. in fact, we're now spending a fair amount of effort targeting small and medium-size businesses and, actually, even larger size enterprise in carrier customers. so not surprisingly, the larger part of our total revenue is our traditional residential business, but in addition to the business services part of the operation, we also have a fairly meaningful ad sales business which actually crossed a billion dollars last year on the back of the presidential election. so political is always nice to have for us every couple of years. >> host: is the cable video part of business growing right now? >> guest: well, we haven't grown

video subs in quite some time. it's a relatively mature business. about 90% of american homes take multichannel video. as a result, we're fairly dependent upon new housing formation to grow the overall pie. and as all of us know given the economy over the past several years, there hasn't been a whole lot of increases in occupied housing. so that's been somewhat challenging. when we ultimately have a return to occupied housing growth, which inevitably we will, i think that should provide us with the wind at our back that should help us grow the video business. at the same time as we've had limited growth in the overall universe of potential video customers, we've also had a number of new entrants into is the video space. so there's been kind of a new equilibrium amongst video providers. we've had both verizon via their fios product and at&t enter our market for video. so that's created somewhat of a headwind in terms of growth in

the video business. but we're very focused on returning the business to growth, and we think ultimately the way that happens is by insuring that we have an absolutely world class video product, and we can come back to that pause there's a lot of things -- because there's a lot of things we're demoing here at the cable show that i think is relevant to that area of the business, but also key to the customer experience is having a really great customer service experience. and that's something that historically has been an area where people have poked at us somewhat. i think there's a lack of appreciation for just how much complexity there is in delivering service to 15 million customers' homes. but i think we're increasingly focused on it and doing a better and better job making our company easier to do business with and simply more customer friendly. >> host: rob marcus, what are you demoing here at the capable capable -- cable show? >> guest: okay. one of the areas that has been a

focus of time, attention, financial resources for us is improving our navigation experience. for a long time now, we've had a very broad video offering. hundreds of linear channels and thousands of hours of on demand content the. the challenge has been enabling customers to easily find that content. and what we're demoing here at the show is our next generation navigation platform which really is a quantum leap forward in terms of discovery of the great content we've always offered. so the guide uses very rich box art, value-added metadata to enable customers to learn more about the shows that thai watching, an intuitive layout, a great search capability, and what i think is pretty cool is based on the show you may be

watching, a recommendation of other shows you might be interested in. so the combination of those features really takes our experience to a totally different level than we've had before. and maybe as interesting is that the guide, the user interface is hosted in the cloud. in addition, it's written in a programming language that is standard. in the past a lot of the cable software was proprietary to the cable industry. the limitation that that imposed on us was development had to be done within the four walls of time warner cable. we now have the ability to capitalize on really great development that is occurring outside of time warner cable. so that means there's really smart people out there developing cool apps that might make the experience viewing our video much better. so i think that's very promising. the fact that it's hosted in the cloud is also very relevant in that we can make modifications,

make updates in response to consumer feedback that can happen overnight with the stroke of a couple of keys on a keyboard. in the past we had to make a mayor software push to literally 15 million settop boxes. not very flexible. so i think the new guide, the new user interface really holds a tremendous amount of promise for what the video experience is going to be going forward. among the other things we're demoing are the latest iteration of our twc tv apps. so we, about a year ago or so, a little more than a year ago, launched a, an app for originally ios platforms, ipads and then iphones which enables customers to view now 300 linear channels of live video and about 4,000 hours of vod content on their iphones or ipads. rendering any screen really in the home a tv, which is pretty

cool for the guest room where you don't necessarily have a tv permanently unstalled, or if you're in the bathroom and want to use your ipad there, it's pretty cool. the really great, new development -- and we launched this only several weeks ago -- is that a subset of that content that i just described is now available to customers outside the home. on their ios devices. so we have about 12 linear channels available, and this is really the subject of rights conversations that we're having with programmers. and about a thousand hours of vod content that's available for customers on the go. from the moment we launched the original app which, by the way, i mentioned ios, but it's also available on android, pcs and macs as well and also on the roku device which brings it to the big screen. but almost since the day we launched the app, customers were clamoring to have that functionality outside the home.

so we're hard at work in expanding the portfolio of assets that are available for customers outside the home as well. and that's something that's going to evolve over time. more devices, more content, giving customers even more choice in the way they consume our video product. >> host: so real tv everywhere, in a sense? >> guest: ultimately, real tv everywhere, yeah. >> host: is the limitation, you talked about the rights, mr. marcus, but is there limitations when it comes to the tech side or the money side? >> guest: no. the technology is really there for the taking. we've already developed the technology necessary to deliver ip streams to all of these ip-enabled devices, and it is purely a function of whether or not programmers will grant us the rights to bring that content experience outside the home. within the home it's not an issue. it's generally covered by the grant of rights we already have from programmers. >> host: some consumers have talked about the authentication

process for tv everywhere, and it's a bit bulky. >> guest: yeah. that's something we're consistently refining, continually refining. the key for us is that for most devices it's a one-time authentication process, so you put your credentials in, use your name and password one time, and the next time you try to access our app on the device in question, it happens automatically. so we're trying to always improve on that, make it easier for customers to actually access their password and user name which sometimes they don't have readily available. also to auto-awe they want case when you are behind the modem we provide you with in your home. so there are a lot of things we can do to ease that process. the goal, of course, is to make it as simple and easy as possible for customers to avail themselves of the experience. >> host: rob marcus joined time warner in 2005. he began as senior executive president, chief financial officer and served also as senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions. when you were in that capacity,

what did you work on? >> guest: well, actually, i was senior vice president of mergers and acquisitions when i was at time warner inc., our former parent. and i did that job under one title or another for about eight years. and i worked on everything from the divestiture of warner music to various partnerships related to time warner cable, in fact. when i moved over to time warner cable, i came in the capacity of senior executive vice president of what i always joke about was a grab bag of responsibilities ranging from the legal department to hr to programming deals. and then i moved into the cfo role, as you mentioned. >> host: well, we're here in washington for the cable show. >> guest: right. >> host: what are some of the issues that you keep an eye on in washington right now? >> guest: yeah. needless to say, we're a highly regulated industry, so we spend a lot of time thinking about the regulatory environment. and rather than go into specifics, i would articulate a

few sort of core principles that inform the positions that we take in washington. for the most part, we're in favor of insuring that relative to other distributers we're treated evenly. we're in favor of a level playing field so that if satellite is free to do certain things, there's no reason we see that we shouldn't be treated the same way. taxation should be comparable so that we can compete readily without the regulatory policies influencing who winners and losers are. with respect to the way we interact with our programming vendors and broadcasters, we think it's key that, again, the power of government not be brought to bear to favor one side over the other. and what we're working through now is the fact that the video regulatory regime dates back really to the 1992 cable act. and needless to say, over the last 20-plus years, the world

has changed quite a bit. so the level of competition we face is very different, the role that local broadcast plays in the overall social ecosystem has changed somewhat. and we think it's time to take a fresh look. so while we don't have any specific proposals that we're advocating at this point in time, we think that it's time for a renewed look at the overall regulatory landscape as it relates to video. and then lastly the key, and i think this is a fundamental principle, is that we think it's critical that any regulation or lack thereof keeps in mind that we need to be incentivized to continue to invest in the physical infrastructure that's the core of every product we deliver. and we're going to be a world leader in the delivery of high-speed data, if we're going to have the fastest speeds, the most capable wi-fi access points, it's key that the

regulatory environment in which we operate actually fosters as opposed to inhibits further investment in that plan. i think there's this common misconception that once the plant is built, we're done and it's just there for the taking. in fact, investment needs to be continual. year after year after year we need to continue to augment the capacity of our plan so that it's capable of dealing with an ever-increasing amount of traffic and an ever-increasing demand for more speed by our customers. >> host: so would you be in favor at this point of a comprehensive rewrite of the '96 telecom act? >> guest: yeah, i hesitate to say that, but i think we certainly need to take a fresh look at many of the elements of the telecom act to insure that the provisions that do survive are ones that are reflective of the current environment which certainly is very different from what existed at the time it was written. >> host: one court case i did want to ask you about, the verizon net neutrality court

case. is that important to your business? >> guest: oh, yes, certainly. and be when i made reference to insuring that regulatory policy incentivizes investment, the fear always is that if we regulate our broadband business in a way that is inconsistent with further investment, that would do a tremendous disservice not only to our business, but also to american consumers. so, yeah, that's something that we're very focused on. >> host: rob marcus, a couple more questions. >> guest: sure. >> host: the spectrum incentive auctions are coming up in 2014. >> guest: yep. >> host: will time warner capable be participating or observing? >> guest: yeah. i think we are interested observers. we didn't get a chance to talk about this, but also on the product side we're focused on always improving our high-speed data experience. generally speaking, that comes in a couple of different forms. one, we want to make more speed

available to our customers. so we currently deliver speeds of as much as 50 megabits a second across our entire footprint to residential customers. in many some markets as high as 100 megabits a second to residential customers. and to business customers we actually deliver speeds that get into the 10 gigabit a second symmetrical range. so speed is one element of product improvement. but the other one is that we are keen to provide our customers with a modicum of mobility. so the way we go about doing that is the deployment of wi-fi hot spots. so over the last year, year and a half we've deployed what are now 15,000 wi-fi access points across our footprint, primarily in los angeles, but to some extent in kansas city, austin, charlotte and new york city. and we'll continue to deploy those wi-fi hot spot so that our customers who subscribe to

high of speed data have the ability when they're out and about to pop open their laptop or turn on their tablet and have access to a robust wi-fi network. and at the same time, we partnered with many of the other cable msos to have roaming arrangements to that time warner cable customer with access comcast wi-fi hot spots in philadelphia or washington, d.c., and a comcast customer can travel to l.a. and access time warner cable wi-fi hot spots. so collectively, we offer about 150,000 wi-fi hot spots for no incremental cost to our high-speed data customers. so relevant to that is the availability of unlicensed spectrum. without sufficient unlicensed spectrum, the ability to have a great wi-fi experience will ultimately in the fullness of time be diminished. so we think it's important as part of the overall spectrum reallocation process, the auction process, to have a certain portion of spectrum

allocated to unlicensed use. so that's something that's important to us, and we'll be advocating for that although we won't be participating in the actual auction process to acquire more spectrum ourselves. we did own spectrum, we participated in the aws spectrum auction, auction 66. we bought collectively across a number of msos about 20 megahertz of spectrum across the u.s. we've subsequently sold that spectrum to verizon wireless, and we're now partnering with verizon wireless to provide their wireless service as part of our overall bundle. so that's the way we've approached the space. >> host: you mentioned one of your markets, kansas city. what's your reaction to what google is doing out there? >> guest: well, it's very interesting. on one level we have no choice but to simply treat them as yet another competitor. so we're doing all of the things we typically do when an overbuilder comes into our foot print. that means insuring that we have

the absolute best products available, that we have the best customer service experience available, and we market aggressively, and as you would expect, insure that our pricing and packaging is very competitive. as a general matter in observing what they're up to, i think we scratch our heads a little bit. we can't quite pen is sill out what the economic rationale for going forward is. we can't, we can't really calculate a aback. but that's really for them to worry about. at the end of the day, we have to treat them as a viable and competitor whether or not there's economic logic to what they're doing. so that's sort of where the google situation stands. >> host: finally, how big is the sports deal out in this l.a.? >> guest: so when we go about insuring that we have the content that customers, that our customers demand, we have multiple ways of accessing that

content. we can do business with an established rsn who does, which does deals directly with teams, conferences, leagues, etc. and in those situations we tend to have somewhat less control over our own destiny. we're somewhat beholden to the deal terms that the established rsn, the third party rsn might dictate. so in the case of the los angeles lakers and then subsequently the l.a. dodger, we were able to do deals directly with those teams on economic terms that we think ultimately stands us in better stead than the alternative of acquiring the content from a third party rsn. in the case of the laker, we've now launched the network. we're up and running. we've sold ads against. we've sold the inventory on those networks. we've actually sold the product into other distributers, so we've been able to offset some of the incremental -- some of the cost of acquiring the content from the teams.

and overall, we're confident that the economics of that deal are better than the alternative would have been. we intend to take a page out of the same playbook as it relates to the dodgers, although we're still early days there. we don't launch until next season, so the plan is to aggressively pursue the same strategy we did in the case of the lakers. and i have no doubt that it will be equally successful. >> host: rob marcus got his undergrad degree at brown, his law degree at columbia. how'd you get into this business? >> guest: you know, one thing leads to another. almost my first day out of law school, i was practicing at a law firm, and i was assigned to a matter for time warner. and one thing led to another, and seven, eight years later i found myself at time warner, and then seven or eight years after that i found myself at time warner cable. it's been a great ride. >> host: rob marcus is president and chief operating officer today of time warner cable. you're watching "the communicators" on c-span.

>> guest: thanks. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies in 1979, brought to you as a public service by your television provider. >> coming up next, two speeches from this past weekend's conference of the faith and freedom coalition featuring former u.n. ambassador john bolton and e.w. jackson, the republican nominee for virginia lieutenant governor. after that we'll be live with an energy conference with a keynote address by energy secretary ernest moniz. and later the senate returns at 2 p.m. eastern with general speeches followed with district court nomination votes and more debate on the immigration bill. >> former u.s. ambassador to the united nations john bolton was one of the speakers at this past weekend's conference of the faith and freedom coalition. this is ten minutes.