Leadership Quote by Michael K. Powell

Powell’s line is a bureaucrat’s attempt at poetry: “deliver to consumers more roots to their home” takes the warmest possible image (roots, home, belonging) and bolts it onto the coldest possible relationship (companies “delivering” to “consumers”). That clash is the tell. He’s not really talking about roots; he’s trying to rebrand infrastructure, telecom, or media policy as something intimate and civic, not merely technical or profit-driven.

The specific intent reads like a sales pitch for connectivity framed as identity: expand access and you don’t just get faster service, you get stability, community, maybe even citizenship. It’s an old political move: take an industry outcome and translate it into a moral good. “Potential” adds another layer of insulation, promising vision without committing to measurable obligations. The phrasing also smuggles in a paternal posture: institutions will “deliver” belonging to people, as if belonging were a product and not a lived condition shaped by wages, housing, schools, and power.

Subtextually, the quote tries to pre-empt skepticism about deregulation, consolidation, or large-scale network buildouts. If the public thinks the agenda is about corporate reach, Powell invites them to feel it as personal anchoring. The language of “more roots” implies a deficit in modern life - mobility, fragmentation, placelessness - that technology can supposedly cure. That’s the cultural context doing the heavy lifting: in an era when “home” is unstable for many, the promise of digital or broadcast “roots” becomes a soothing substitute for the harder politics of material security.