If the last 10 years have taught us anything, it's that the cable industry in the US is focused on openness, innovation, and customer satisfaction; but if we can't keep the government's knuckleheaded regulators out of our cable lines and off our Internet, cable's nearly absurd level of innovation will be throttled down more effectively than BitTorrent uploads on Comcast's network. Well, so says the cable industry, at least.

Kyle McSlarrow heads the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the trade group that represents cable. Any job that involves getting up on a regular basis and defending cable's insane rate hikes as consumer-focused measures that spur innovation can't be a real laughfest, but McSlarrow soldiers on. Yesterday, he gave a major speech to the National Press Club in Washington, DC that made the above points (though with fewer digs at Comcast) and claimed that cable was "a great American success story."

In the speech, McSlarrow described cable's basic approach as one characterized by "embracing innovation and open markets and platforms" and "focusing on the customer." (I know, right?) The point of the speech wasn't just to talk up cable, though, and it opened with a call for a "public policy approach that relies on 'self-regulatory' actions that facilitate collaborative private-sector solutions to complicated technology and business disputes" like network management and net neutrality.

To read the article, click here [1].