The FCC is planning to measure broadband affordability. Ars Technica reports on the cable industry’s lobby group response…

The US broadband industry is protesting a Federal Communications Commission plan to measure the affordability of Internet service.

The FCC has been evaluating US-wide broadband deployment progress on a near-annual basis for almost three decades but hasn’t factored affordability into these regular reviews. The broadband industry is afraid that a thorough examination of prices will lead to more regulation of ISPs. …

Cable industry lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association complained in a filing released Monday that the Notice of Inquiry’s “undue focus on affordability—or pricing—is particularly inappropriate.” The group, which represents cable providers such as Comcast and Charter, said that setting an affordability benchmark could lead to rate regulation:

While the Commission has reiterated that it has no interest in any kind of rate regulation, the proposal to make a traditional deployment analysis contingent on whether the Commission determines that broadband pricing is sufficiently affordable suggests that rate regulation in some form is potentially on the table.

They also remark on industry response to potentially  raising the speed definitions…

The FCC Notice of Inquiry also proposes to raise the speed of its benchmark for determining whether a broadband service counts as “advanced telecommunications capability.” People often refer to this as the FCC’s broadband definition. The benchmark was last updated in January 2015 and remains at 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream.

Trump-era FCC Chairman Ajit Pai kept the 25Mbps/3Mbps standard throughout his term. The new Notice of Inquiry prepared by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposes raising the standard to 100Mbps on the download side and 20Mbps for uploads. The notice also proposes “a long-term fixed broadband speed goal” of 1Gbps download speeds and 500Mbps upload speeds.

USTelecom, which represents fiber and DSL providers such as AT&T and Verizon, supported the 100Mbps/20Mbps benchmark but objected to the long-term goal of 1Gbps/500Mbps. The trade group argued that the 500Mbps upload benchmark would shut out all non-fiber networks.