(credit: Free Press)
If Charter Communications is allowed to buy cable rivals Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Bright House Networks (BHN), just two Internet service providers could control about 70 percent of the nation's 25Mbps-and-up broadband subscriptions.
Comcast would remain the country's largest ISP with 22.87 million Internet subscribers, while Charter's merger will push it into second place with at least 20.56 million. (AT&T has 15.83 million.) Combined, Comcast and Charter would account for less than half of home Internet connections. But under the Federal Communications Commission definition of "broadband," which requires download speeds of at least 25Mbps, Comcast and Charter would reign supreme in the US.
The FCC changed its definition of broadband from 4Mbps downstream/1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps/3Mbps a year ago and uses the new definition to evaluate whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans at a reasonable and timely pace. Though many Americans get by with slower speeds, the FCC argues that higher speeds are necessary for multi-person families using the Internet to quickly download big files and use high-quality video and voice applications.
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