Edward Wyatt

The number of homes in the United States that subscribe to Internet service has grown at a 15 percent annual rate over the last decade, to 85 million. But as much as 30 percent of households do not have a connection faster than dial-up speed, according to government figures just released.

In its semiannual report on Internet Access Services, the Federal Communications Commission found that as of June 30, 2013, roughly 70 percent of households had fixed Internet connections of at least 0.2 megabits per second, a rather slow speed but generally faster than dial-up. Most people with Internet connections have even faster speeds, however. About 54 percent of all households can download data or video at a rate of three megabits per second or better.

The FCC defines broadband, or high-speed Internet service, as having a minimum download speed of four megabits per second. The figures show a stubbornly persistent digital divide in this country between households that subscribe to Internet service and those that do not. Other figures in the report show that Internet adoption rates grow along with income and education. In addition, city dwellers are more likely to subscribe to Internet service than are residents of less-populated areas.

America’s infrastructure is crumbling, says former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell, the chief executive of the cable industry’s trade association.

Roads are in poor condition, bridges are structurally deficient, drinking water systems are near the end of their useful life and portions of the electric grid suffer regular blackouts. All of which, Powell says, proves that the country’s broadband networks cannot be considered a public utility and left in the hands of government oversight.

“Because the Internet is not regulated as a public utility, it grows and thrives, watered by private capital and a light regulatory touch,” Powell said in Los Angeles at the Cable Show, the annual meeting of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. “It does not depend on the political process for its growth, or the extended droughts of public funding,” Powell said. “This is why broadband is the fastest deploying technology in world history, reaching nearly every citizen in our expansive country.”

Powell’s remarks were in response to recent calls for the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify high-speed Internet service as a “common carrier,” a public utilitylike network that should be subject to strict regulation.

Comcast took its case for acquiring Time Warner Cable to Capitol Hill, arguing at a Senate hearing that its proposed $45 billion takeover would benefit consumers by generating greater investment and more competition among cable-television and broadband companies.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees antitrust issues, is reviewing the merger, which has generally been supported by conservative lawmakers and opposed by Democrats, who fear that it will result in higher bills for consumers for cable and high-speed Internet service.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) who is chairman of the committee, said in an opening statement that the impact of the merger on consumers is probably the most important consideration in determining whether the deal should go ahead. “Consumers do not want to hear complex legal jargon or obscure regulatory terms,” Sen Leahy said. “They want to know why their cable bills are going up. They want to know why they do not have more choice of providers.”

Comcast CEO David Cohen did acknowledge that Comcast has a reputation for leaving its customers dissatisfied. “It bothers us that we have so much trouble delivering a high quality of service to customers on a regular basis,” he said. But it is trying to improve, he added, by hiring more service employees and improving training.

Comcast executives are expected to face tough questions from some Judiciary Committee members, like Senator Al Franken (D-MN), who has written to regulators asking them to take a hard look at the deal. “I’m very concerned that consumers are going to get stuck with higher cable and Internet prices, fewer choices and even worse service,” Sen Franken said, when asked what his questions will focus on during the hearing. “Comcast has an army of lobbyists pushing this deal, but during this hearing we need to make sure that consumers’ voices are being heard, too.”

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission have begun their inquiries into the merger, which would join the two largest cable-television and broadband companies.

Since announcing plans to take over Time Warner Cable two months ago, Comcast has steadily beat the drum with one big message: The merger will not limit consumers’ choice in picking a cable-television or high-speed Internet service provider.

Comcast is expected to repeat this message twice -- during the first Senate hearings on the $45 billion deal, and again in legal filings it is expected to give to the two government agencies reviewing the merger.

But in highlighting how the two companies do not compete with each another in any metropolitan market, Comcast has exposed a potential weakness in its argument, legal experts say. The lack of overlap in cable TV is the legacy of government-granted local monopolies.

But the government never granted monopolies in the unregulated, highly lucrative business of high-speed Internet service -- an area where the two companies face little to no competition. As a result, regulators are likely to focus as much on how the merger will affect the market for high-speed Internet, also known as broadband, as how it will affect cable TV service. Comcast, however, might have provided evidence that it faces little competition in high-speed Internet in dozens of Federal Communications Commission petitions filed over the last few years seeking to get out from under local cable rate regulation.

In the petitions, Comcast argues that the nation’s two satellite television companies, DirecTV and DISH Network, meet those requirements in many markets by accounting for at least 15 percent of television service. While a few markets also have telecommunications, usually AT&T or Verizon, competing to provide television service, most of the petitions cite only the satellite companies as rivals. But satellite companies do not offer high-speed Internet service, as the technology prevents it. That means that in those markets, Comcast is usually the only provider of high-speed broadband using a cable modem -- the fastest service going, next to fiber-optic cable, which is not widely available in the United States.