you don't have to invite and there. suddenly the north koreans. but to it is a process because that tradition has been not to get involved if you can help it. the old chinese saying that it is better to have one. butanone. and so i think it is gradually changing. also, they have to learn how to do -- how to get involved. ..

>> we will hear about student loan rates any meeting between steny hoyer and the university of maryland. >> c-span is created by america's cable company since 1979 and brought to is a public service by your television provider. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> this week we feature interviews from the cable show in washington dc. we will learn about the wireless bureau with bureau chief ruth millman. >> we want to introduce you to craig moffett who is managing partner of market research. mr. moffitt, what you do for a living? >> i cover the stocks of the

cable companies and i just started my own firm. i love the telecom practice after running an internet business in 1999 through 2002 and i went back to the telecom world and started writing about the telecom industry and the cable and satellite business. >> when you speak how many people listen? >> well, i hope so. that is the goal. i am probably known better on wall street as a cable and satellite analysts, but i think of myself as a telecom guy. but they are two very closely related industries and i think it helps to have them both at the same time. >> when you think about the future of the cable company as it currently exists, what exists? >> the cable companies are not media companies but

infrastructure providers and that is all they are. digital pipe in and out of the home. for 10 years people misunderstood, particularly on wall street commonly misunderstood what the companies were commonly thought of them as media companies that were subject to all of the vagaries of online distribution and who is white and netflix and they were perceived to be old media dinosaurs and that's not what they are. they were infrastructure providers and they have the best and most advantaged infrastructure trust really that exists. >> capital markets have come around to understand that view header and the stocks have done well. i think now is the question of what you do for an encore. people understand how good product is. but there are genuine challenges facing the business with respect to video that the cable operators will have to solve. >> what are some of the

challenges? >> it is a price problem. you have this blessing of pricing power that the cable industry and satellite industry have been able to pass along price increases to consumers, which from microeconomics points of view is a blessing. but eventually it becomes a curse. you have raised prices so much that lower income consumers are being squeezed out of ecosystem. meanwhile the programmers are raising their prices which is in input costs at a double-digit rate. perversely the rate of price increases is so large that people are being squeezed out of ecosystem and yet the content owners and programmers are responding by saying that therefore i am getting less unit growth because i'm not spending for have to raise prices even faster. you're watching this ecosystem

blow itself apart from inside. it is in slow motion. i'm not suggesting that it's going to collapse. but you're watching the foundation of the video ecosystem structure promotes. >> the time warner situation and example of that or they were there having fewer customers that higher rates and making more per customer, what is not about? >> they have all been losing market share for years. what is different now is this phenomenon the people of at the time of her tennis. at least empirically didn't show up in the numbers until the second half of 2010. people started talking about it in the first half of 2003. but in 2010 there was a watershed moment that the rate of scripture growth dropped below the rate of new household formation, which was already suppressed by weakness coming out of the recession.

but it was even lower than that and so mathematically you have negative penetration directory that has only accelerated since 2000 and to the point that now they are actually contracting in these terms and it now is contracting at a rate of about three tenths of a percent per year. that will probably continue to accelerate even if new household formation continues to improve and so you have a genuine problem here that you are no longer seen growth but in the context of now but this is shrinking and the numbers can be expected to get much better as a video subscribers. >> this is all because of wireless? >> this is because of the unit growth of the industry. this is what i would suggest

this is the stereotype of the cord cutter this is part of the access to all of the digital content at your fingertips and the reality is quite different. it is a lower income americans may not even have a broadband subscription and is looking at the pay-tv subscription is a necessary cost of production and they are switching now to the consumption of netflix and a bunch of online content as much as they are switching back to over the broadcast tv. you are seeing an affordability crisis not so much a technology revolution. >> are you bullish for bearish? >> the cable companies really good businesses it's not good

enough to be good but is more or less in line to these businesses is that a model for the future for other cable companies as well remember that this is time warner cable that was part of the corporation.

good is that they went and more vertically integrated in the balance and there are some regulatory complexities that go along with being vertically integrated. this is post the 2009 or 2010 kind of deal. and so it's not entirely clear right now with a vertical integration is about indefinitely. and their obligations in as well that may be that we start to see some more innovative ways are

they ready for when you're using your ipod, you're probably using it via wifi. and they are competing this is not just an issue of speeds but it is a function of the speed of the connection but how long that lasts for session frequency.

they're not really designed for people to go on all the time span and stand on the time and do things like streaming video and wireless devices are actually two connected or tethered to the wireless networks and i think the telecom industry is at large and part of cable and satellite and in so if you come from a background where the divestiture was a generally

recent event where the breakup of it was a genuinely recent event, i think you have a profound appreciation for how foreign the rules are. having done this for 20 something years i have a pretty profound appreciation of the rules do not the neutrality case included this in a counterintuitive way. if the dc circuit vacates the internet order first reading would be that that would be a victory for the network operators you don't know how

it's going to be filled. i suspect the network operators in general would probably be better off with the status quo that you know, if you will then run the entire question back up in the air and waiting for it to be re-resolved, if you will. >> craig moffett, google, netflix, amazon -- are they positioned to take a good chunk of business away from the cable companies? >> well, i think the short answer is probably not. but remember where we started this discussion. they are not media companies, they are infrastructure

providers. if you understand that they are the physical layer that is the network physical layer of distribution, none of those other players actually participate and many of them used to use the term that they there are alternative pathways in the home. blue and netflix and what have you and those are not alternative pathways. aggregations of content.

>> what is the area of technology bringing to this marketplace that is another way to do free over the air broadcast tv there's a lot of dvr and interesting functionality to it. there are two potentially different readings. we are determining the legality of it.

it is an interesting design. not so much because of the antennas and the way that they have worked around the rules. but i think that more importantly, it is a very distinct list of consumer appetite for online streaming version of broadcast channels that they can get free over the air for the cost of an antenna. >> when you think about this in the future of tv, what comes to mind? >> i suspect that the old adage is everything changes we are

looking at world is dominated by the traditional tv packages this requires a willful ignorance of the ecosystem. through the week which of the people that are out of the system that are at in a chelating made. we are somewhere where things really start to accelerate in the traditional bundle starts to come apart. >> we have been talking with craig moffett and managing

partners of moffett research. this is the communicators on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] >> welcome, we are with the head of the wireless bureau right now. what you do? >> we do all of the licensing of the various wireless services everything from your cell phone service to amateur radio. >> we are responsible for the administration in making sure that the notification in the

preservation laws have complied with. >> i think it was created in 1995 around the time of the first wireless auctions. the map because of today's technology, is your portfolio part of this and growing? >> certainly the size of the industry that she is regulating is growing. the wireless industry keeps growing. we have people thinking of more and more ways to use wireless services, whether it is unlicensed devices like your

wifi. >> you have regulations at all on that? >> part of that is the office of engineering and technology they are mostly dealing with us and the devices are certified so that they don't interfere with any other users of this spectrum. >> what is one of the issues in front of the wireless bureau? >> they might have mentioned this earlier, but one of the big ones she is from the different

part of the spectrum and in return, they have a part of the auction proceeds as we rearrange the spectrum and sell it to the wireless companies for flexible use. >> what is your bureaus part of this. >> one is to figure out so auctioning everything. everything from paging licenses to cell phone licenses and also to others. this will be the first time that we have ever offered money to a wireless broadcaster.

>> there are two types of actions which the commission is looking at. it is a way to make sure that we are efficiently distributing and we ran the mobility fund. we are begging for their support that they are part of the universal service funds and that is the only incentive option is to be more complicated.

we have to run this auction to license out that spectrum. there's a lot of work that has to be done by the staff and we are working on that right now. >> maybe that makes you are job easier. >> another thing we are looking for is as we mentioned cell phone towers, as more and more people use mobile broadband, a we have more capacity and more

spectrum whether that is adding more equipment to existing towers were moving to the antennas that are closer together to make things more smoothly and quickly. we are also looking at those issues. >> what does the show to the cable company this is part of our hotspots

all of these companies are up there to get good service and that is what we are interested in. i came to the sec thinking that i wanted to work on broadcast issues at the time. so it was in the early 1980s. somebody turned me onto telecom and i thought it was so fascinating that i kept on doing it. we are talking with ruth milkman. thank you for joining us on the "the man who stayed behind" this

afternoon. >> c-span is brought to you by your television provider as the local part of your service. >> in 15 minutes, house gop leaders talk about student loan rates and first president obama and efficient government. then we have steny hoyer with university of maryland students. >> several advanced until you about. the senate judiciary committee will replace robert mueller as head of the fbi. then at 2:00 p.m. eastern from a memorial service for the 19 firefighters who died in arizona. they were members of the prescott fire departments elite choctaws.

speakers will include joe biden, vice president of the united states. the nixon tapes from the summer of 1972. talking about key presidential advisers and south dakota's george mcgovern. >> president obama announces new management agenda for the federal government today. [applause] [applause]

>> thank you. thank you very much. thank you, everyone. everyone please have a seat. well, thank you so much. back in 2007 when i was first nnr ts office, had the opportunity to visit google headquarters in silicon valley to discuss ways for democracy to come forward into the 21st century. after all, we had set out to build a new type of campaign, one to you bring people together. entrusted him them with this technology to organize on their own. the idea was simple. instead of bringing more people to the campaign, we wanted to bring people to more people and let them determine its course and nature i very much felt that

doubt that some of the things we were doing to help us get elected could also be used once we were elected throughout this process we have created one of the most inclusive processes. once we got to washington and we have been humming with new technology come i have been fighting to keep my blackberry. as everyone knows, government is not always high-tech or

user-friendly turn over the past 4.5 years, we have worked diligently to change that. just like we did to help people in the private sector get it done. the first chief technology office, sinatra took office, i did. today our chief technology officer, todd park, and our chief information officer are working to integrate and apply the best technology to help solve some of our biggest challenges from jobs to health care cost to keeping our nation secure. we are the first to confesshe progress has not always come quick and major challenges still remain. we have made huge loss of your government more