Big cable’s influence, potential benefit reflected in infrastructure measure pending in Senate

The influence of big cable TV companies like Comcast and Charter Communications is reflected in the massive omnibus infrastructure bill pending before the U.S. Senate. A major indication is the proposed legislation’s requirement that some $42 billion in grant funding it would allocate to state governments be used to provide IP connectivity of at least 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up with latency that sufficient to allow “reasonably foreseeable, real-time, interactive applications.” That’s perfectly aligned with the current throughput offered by cable TV providers over hybrid coaxial copper and fiber cable and the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS).

The measure’s emphasis on prioritizing funds to high-cost areas with poor connectivity options points to largely benefit big cable. Consider cable TV’s history. It developed in the 1950s to serve rural areas too distant to reliably receive over the air signals from TV transmitters in cities, serving homes with cables distributed from signal amplifiers connected to large “community antenna” arrays to boost the signal.

If the bill becomes law, cable lobbyists could mount a full court press on statehouses like that of the mid-2000s when they worked to shift authority over their local municipal franchises to state public utility commissions in order to avoid universal service demands from the locals. The case they might present to policymakers: give us the funds to build out our footprints in our traditional rural areas without good connectivity just as they lacked access to urban TV signals in the past.

Cable would benefit by attaining a monopoly position in more sparsely populated rural and exurban areas where telephone companies have abandoned their legacy copper telephone lines and have not offered residential services delivered over fiber. There, cable would not have to share a duopoly market with telephone companies in more densely developed areas where the telcos are offering symmetric fiber services instead of cable’s asymmetric 100/20 Mbps throughput.