Cable Lobby Still Busy Hallucinating Broadband Competition If nothing else, the cable industry's top lobbying group the NCTA is consistent when it comes to pretending there's serious broadband competition in the United States. Ars Technica directs our attention to a new blog post by the NCTA that proudly proclaims that this lack of competition many of you experience on a daily basis -- doesn't actually exist.

just right -- you'll apparently realize the United States is simply awash in intense competition. As is usually the case, if you tilt your head, squint, and look at the country-- you'll apparently realize the United States is simplyin intense competition. "Competition isn’t just the rule in television, it defines broadband markets as well," proclaimed the NCTA. "In spite of living in one of the largest and most rural nations, 88 percent of American consumers can choose from at least two wired Internet service providers. When you include competition from mobile and satellite broadband providers, much of America is home to multiple competing ISPs leveraging different and ever-improving technologies." "This competition has led to rapid progress in the quality of consumer internet connections with average peak speeds in America quadrupling over the last five years, from 23.4 Mbps to 86.5 Mbps and the average price per megabit dropping 90 percent in 10 years, from $9.01 per megabit per second to $0.89 per megabit per second," states the group. Of course there's several tricks the NTCA used to obtain these rosy metrics. One, they utilized a baseline definition of 3 Mbps downstream for broadband, despite the fact that the FCC redefined broadband as 25 Mbps down back in 2014 (a move the NCTA strongly opposed for what should be obvious reasons). Raise the bar to 25 Mbps, and the picture immediately gets less attractive, with two thirds of America unable to get those speeds from more than one provider. The cable lobby's claims about dropping prices are misleading as well. While these uncompetitive providers often keep their advertised price the same, they've taken to getting their pound of flesh in other ways. In less competitive areas, that comes in the forms of The cable lobby's claims about dropping prices are misleading as well. While these uncompetitive providers often keep their advertised price the same, they've taken to getting their pound of flesh in other ways. In less competitive areas, that comes in the forms of arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. But these companies also really enjoy using misleading below the line hidden fees . Fees and surcharges that aren't, as you might expect, factored in to the NCTA's analysis.







News Jump Charter Relaunches Free 60-day Internet And Wi-Fi Offer; NCTA: FCC Should Stick With 25/3 Speed Threshold; + more news Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news Verizon To Buy Reseller TracFone For $7B; 5G Not The Competitive Threat To Cable Many Thought It Would Be; + more news MS.Wants Records From AT&T On $300M Project; Google Fiber Outages In Austin, Houston, Other Texan Cities; + more news States With The Biggest Decreases In Speed; AT&T Hopes You'll Forget Its Fight Against Accurate Maps; + more news AT&T's CEO Has A Familiar $olution To US Broadband Woes; EarthLink Files Suit Against Charter; + more news 5G Doesn't Live Up To Hype, AT&T's 5G Slower Than Its 4G; Cord-Cutting Now In 37% of Broadband Households; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed

Most recommended from 45 comments

Skippy25

join:2000-09-13

Hazelwood, MO 12 recommendations Skippy25 Member Who would have thunk?! Anything the NCTA has to say positive about competition, speeds and prices is utter BS. Plain and simple and there is no 2 ways about it. notonto

join:2015-06-26 11 recommendations notonto Member Bubble? The 88 percent stat reminds me of how inflated mortgage backed securities were passed off on investors prior to the 2008 crash.

dslwanter

Not changing my username of 17 years.

Premium Member

join:2002-12-16

Mineral Ridge, OH Ubiquiti UniFi AP-LR

Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X SFP

ARRIS CM3200

9 recommendations dslwanter Premium Member America did it to itself By letting Verizon & AT&T become mobile giants, they effectively moved all of their spending to the mobile sector. Thus little to no competition to cable giants, who have primaily kept investing and improving their wire line network while the two biggest telcos moved to wireless. In this area, there is more competition for companies like Charter who compete with Century Link in many of the areas they serve in this area, because Century Link has deployed at least 25mbps to most of their footprint here. Century Link doesn't have the wireless market that AT&T does. AT&T, however, doesn't offer such speeds.

Anon981d8

@cutcom.net 4 recommendations Anon981d8 Anon 1.5 Mbps!! Wow!! Yes, here's the "wired" competition in my city. Charter/Spectrum/whatever they're calling themselves this week offers 60 Mbps which is good but slows to almost 10Mbps if you live in a densely populated neighborhood. And the competition is Centurylink offering 1.5 Mbps. No typo, one-point-five Megabytes per second. And Centurylink doesn't even cover half the city. If you live really close to the hub then you may be offered the blazing speed of 7 Mbps. At that speed you can maybe stream 720p video! Wow!

So Charter/Spectrum/whatevername raises prices a few bucks every year because they know they have no real competitors.

alchav

join:2002-05-17

Saint George, UT 4 recommendations alchav Member Copper is Obsolete, Cable needs to offer FTTH in order to Compete! Any form of Copper as an Infrastructure is Obsolete, if the Cable Companies want to Compete they have to upgrade to Fiber. Then they can Compete with AT&T, Verizon, and Google! Ostracus

join:2011-09-05

Henderson, KY 3 recommendations Ostracus Member What is "competition"? Unfortunately caps and overages reduce the "competition" argument to who will affect you the least. Satellite has gotten better and LEO promises it will improve, but the argument of competition is for the here and now. DSL is the unwanted step-child. And of course there's the argumentative firestorm that's dial-up.