Cable Companies are Making Things Up Again

[Commentary] The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the cable industry trade association, argues the proposal by the Federal Communications Commission to redefine "highspeed broadband" from 4 Mbps down/1 Mbps up to 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up simply isn't necessary to meet the legal definition of "high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology.”

As it turns out, the way most Internet service providers advertise to their customers gives every indication that much greater speeds than a mere 4 Mbps/1Mbps are needed for a high-quality experience in photo sharing, music downloads, and video streaming. The exact opposite of the message they are sending to the FCC not to break from that standard. Either the companies are misleading customers to push them to higher-priced bundles that they maybe don’t really need, or they are misleading the FCC to avoid more accurate broadband deployment standards (not to mention a more accurate market dominance analysis for proposed mergers). But it can’t be neither. This effort seems unlikely to forestall the FCC’s proposal at this point in the game, no matter what NCTA says.