I finally canceled cable modem service after 27 years. It’s funny what it would take a networking guy like me – e.g., I wrote the program that my installer used to set up my initial cable modem Internet service – so long to figure out I don’t need it, but I got there in the end.

My inspiration came from watching the cable industry’s chief lobbyist, Michael Powell, testifying at a House Comms & Tech subcommittee hearing on spectrum policy yesterday. Plain as day, the former FCC chairman said: “Wi-Fi effectively IS the Internet.”

That being the case, I immediately unplugged my cable modem and fired up Wi-Fi. Sure enough, I was able to internet through my phone just by turning on Wi-Fi hotspot.

Life After Cable

When I did that, I discovered that I now had more Internet than cable was giving me: I could send data to the Internet five times faster, at 200 Mbps instead of 40. So yeah, Wi-Fi is the Internet.

Or so I thought until I remembered that I was using my phone’s cellular connection to go outside my office. My data plan is not so great (because I typically use Wi-Fi instead of cellular at home), so pretty soon I was going to run out of Internet.

That would be a bummer.

Rescued From Disaster!

Fortunately, I had a couple of notices on my front door to the effect that two new fiber optic ISPs had moved into my neighborhood, GFiber (Google) and Quantum Fiber (Century Link.) They offered to let me send data to the Internet way faster than cable for the same price.

So I signed up with the Quantum folks because they got here first. Using my time-tested algorithm for Internet service – get the fastest service you can find for $100/month – I chose a 3 gigabit plan, a mere 75 times faster than cable modem.

I can see why lobbyist Powell confined his testimony to Wi-Fi and spectrum sharing without mentioning his industry’s aging money maker at all. When you’re selling a service that stumbles along at 1997 speed in 2025, you don’t have what we call a “compelling value proposition.”

What’s Going on With Cable?

While cable is the most hated industry in the the US, Wi-Fi is touted by one of its creators as the world’s most beloved technology. So it stands to reason that asking Congress for favors is more likely to succeed if you cast yourself as a Wi-Fi fan rather than a cable industry lobbyist.

Powell is no dummy, even if he did tout Ultra-Wideband as chairman of the FCC. [If you don’t know what that is, you’re forgiven because no one else does either. Essentially, it was a way to overlay wireless data channels over normal ones by making them ultra-wide. It died on the vine despite my best efforts to save it by creating a fancy distributed reservation protocol in 2002…too much interference.]

As noted, cable faces competition from fiber with higher speeds, and it’s also squeezed by the 5G Fixed Wireless Access services provided by mobile providers for peanuts. Add Starlink to the picture and the future of cable is bleak.

Survival Strategies

Cable is pursuing a three prong strategy to forestall extinction:

1. Starve FWA of the spectrum it needs in the 3, 6, 7, and 8 GHz bands. The availability of spectrum is the single most important limiting factor in FWA growth.
2. Cut off BEAD funding for fiber by diverting funds to less powerful technologies such as Starlink. Unfortunately, this would open the door to more FWA, hence the spectrum strangulation ploy is more important.
3. Finally, improve the service by addressing its painful asymmetry. Broadband doesn’t need to be equal speeds up and down, but 40 Mbps up and 1.2 Gbps down is ridiculous.

There may be a fourth prong, because I see some neighbors complaining about construction noise generated by our two new networks.

What a Nice Problem to Have

This was raised at last night’s community meeting with our city council member in the midst of a discussion about which fiber provider is better. What a marvelous problem to have.

Anyhow, the next generation of cable modem DOCSIS technology is developing slowly, and marketing it requires a complete revamp to the cable sales pitch that emphasizes download speeds and ignores everything else.

They’re trying to retain customers today with cut-rate deals, but that’s not going to be enough. Curiosity alone is driving customers from cable to fiber as it becomes available.

Wi-Fi Doesn’t Compete with Cellular

Look, it’s utterly idiotic to claim that Wi-Fi and cellular are at war with each other. Wi-Fi is a very limited distance technology that begins to fade at 20 feet.

Wi-Fi is more like Ethernet, a way for computers and IoT devices to reach the device – cable modem, optical network terminator, or 5G radio – that actually connects to the Internet. The alternative to Wi-Fi is Ethernet cable. [BTW, you can learn a lot about today’s Ethernet by watching this Serial Port podcast.]

It’s not always convenient to run Ethernet, but when you can use it, it’s better than Wi-Fi. Gamers sneer at Wi-Fi because Ethernet is faster, cheaper, more reliable, and less prone to degradation from interference.

It should always be the first choice for connecting devices in the home or office to the local network. The benefit of Wi-Fi is ease of installation, mobility, and safety – no wires to trip on. Wi-Fi isn’t nearly as mobile as cellular, but it’s OK within confined spaces.

Wi-Fi is Doing Fine

So let’s not fool ourselves, Wi-Fi is great as far as it goes but it’s not universal connectivity. It’s also not suffering from congestion, nor is it likely to need additional spectrum in the next ten years.

With the 3 gigabit symmetrical Internet plan I currently have, Wi-Fi 7 is perfectly capable of saturating the link in Speedtest. Lower Wi-Fi versions are not – even Wi-Fi 6E that uses the 6 GHz band because their engineering constrains their throughput.

The best performance with Wi-Fi is achieved by enabling MLO, which uses a combination of 5 GHz and 6 GHz at the same time. The user community has a long way to go before it replaces legacy standards with Wi-Fi 7, but that’s not a problem for Congress.

NCTA is trying to pass itself off as Wi-Fi’s greatest friend, but nobody should fall for that. A troubled industry is seeking help from Congress for protection from competition, part one hundred million in US politics.

Yes Virginia, Wi-Fi frequently is the Internet…but just for the first 20 feet. The other 99.999999% is Ethernet, fiber, and licensed wireless.