Timothy Stenovec

[Commentary] Anybody who's ever tried to stream a movie or use the web on a 3G or 4G LTE network knows it is no competition for a Wi-Fi connection, at least in terms of cost and reliability. And yet Comcast and Time Warner Cable, hilariously, want us to believe it is.

"I would also note that mobile wireless is rapidly becoming a viable alternative to cable broadband given the ever-increasing capabilities of LTE as well as continued advances in compression technology," Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus said in a testimony in front of lawmakers.

Except that it's not.

"To call wireless broadband a current competitor to cable broadband is a bit of an insult to the average consumer's intelligence," said Bill Menezes, an analyst who specializes in mobile services at Gartner, the technology research firm.

People typically get Internet access at their homes by plugging a modem into a wall and paying a company like Comcast or Time Warner Cable every month for service. Marcus is saying that people could ditch these modems and instead use 4G hotspots -- devices that connect to a cellular network and give off a Wi-Fi signal -- as their primary way of accessing the Internet.

That's ridiculous -- at least right now. Mobile networks are not yet any kind of competition for broadband in terms of either cost or reliability, Menezes pointed out. Mobile data is much more expensive than data from a fixed network. With your wireless phone plan, you likely have to pay overage fees if you cross a relatively low data limit each month.