The Federal Communications Commission should redefine broadband as speeds of at least 50/20Mbps, according to the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.

The advocacy group argues that the FCC’s current definition of 25/3Mbps is too slow to support the growth of high-bandwidth online applications including high-definition video, cloud computing, and online gaming.

“People use their connections for many reasons, and often multitask,” the group writes in a filing submitted to the FCC this month. “It is easy to see how multiple people with multiple devices engaging in multiple online activities on the same residential connection can quickly lead to buffering, slow load times, and frustration even with a 25/3 connection.”

In general, consumer groups want the FCC to push providers to offer faster speeds, particularly telephone companies still relying on ADSL, a technology that first became widely available in the 1990s. There are millions of consumers still reliant on DSL technology on copper wire phone networks that can only support speeds of 6Mbps or less. Many of those are Verizon and AT&T customers, particularly in suburban and rural areas bypassed by Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-verse. Almost no AT&T or Verizon ADSL customers come close to achieving the FCC’s current minimum definition of broadband: 25/3Mbps.

The OTI argues that it isn’t just the speed required by applications, it is also the number of concurrent connections. As emerging technology like the Internet of Things introduces new devices that will share a user’s home broadband connection, faster internet speeds may be needed.

“The general consensus around IoT is that, with potentially billions of new devices connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi or cellular signals, capacity will need to increase,” the organization writes.

But the OTI will have to contend with provider opposition to redefining broadband speeds upwards. The NCTA – the Internet and Television Association, the nation’s largest cable lobbying group, wants the current definition maintained by the FCC.

“The current benchmark accommodates the expected needs of even those households using an atypically large amount of bandwidth, accounting for multiple streams of bandwidth intensive applications like HD streaming video, in addition to web browsing, email, and other applications,” the NCTA wrote. “The Commission should reject the notion of adopting a future-oriented, ‘aspirational’ benchmark, which would be necessarily divorced from the realities of the marketplace.”

Many NCTA members already offer speeds in excess of 50Mbps, although many cable companies also cap their customers’ usage.

The cable industry’s broadband Achilles’ heel has always been upstream speeds that are set much lower than download speeds. But the days of asymmetric cable broadband may soon be a thing of the past if CableLabs successfully defines a new Full Duplex extension for DOCSIS 3.1 — bringing symmetrical broadband speeds to cable companies across the country.

CableLabs sees the potential of eventually offering multi-gigabit broadband over today’s existing hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) cable systems. Marketing 1,000/1,000Mbps internet access could keep cable operators competitive with fiber to the home services that already offer symmetrical internet speeds.

The cable industry-supported research group is collaborating with vendors, according to Belal Hamzeh, vice president of wireless for CableLabs, in a blog post.

“The ecosystem support for the Full Duplex DOCSIS 3.1 technology has been staggering, with many vendors collaborating and contributing to the development of the technology,” Hamzeh wrote. “A recent example is Cisco’s contribution of a new silicon reference design of a digital echo canceler that maximizes the use of HFC capacity to provide a scalable multi-gigabit return path.”

The Full Duplex DOCSIS 3.1 project transitioned from the innovation phase to the R&D phase in June. A working group will continue to meet on a regular basis to finalize the specification, which will allow vendors to begin producing modems that support the new standard.

Stop the Cap! reader Gabe, a Time Warner Cable customer, recently decided to upgrade his service to Charter’s fastest internet plan in his area — Ultra/100Mbps. That upgrade stopped dead in its tracks when Charter Communications informed him there is a mandatory $200 “activation” fee for customers selecting 100Mbps service.

We learned this upgrade fee is not new for Charter Communications’ existing customers. First implemented in 2012, Charter Communications claims the activation fee is set at a level commensurate with the value of having premium speed service.

“Ultra is a premium service which results in higher incremental network investments, equipment costs, and other operating expenses,” Charter Communications wrote in 2012. “In an effort to maintain reasonable monthly recurring service fees, we have implemented a higher installation fee for Ultra customers.”

We’ve taken a look to see if this fee can be waived and we found no instance where customers can avoid it. However, customers signing up for business service, which costs about the same as residential service, can subscribe to 100Mbps and face a $99 installation fee instead of $200 in most areas.

Only half of CenturyLink’s customers in well-populated areas formerly served by Qwest can buy broadband service at 40Mbps or higher, while rural customers fare considerably worse with less than 25% able to get High Speed Internet at those speeds.

Customers have noticed and at least 65,000 canceled their broadband service with the phone company in the second quarter of this year, most presumably switching to their area’s cable operator.

“CenturyLink is by far the most abysmal telephone company I’ve ever had to deal with and I’m 63 years old,” shares Glen Canby in Arizona. Canby is a retired telephone company engineer that spent 40 years with a larger phone company serving the midwestern U.S.  “Their reviews online echo my own experiences, which have ranged from being quoted one price while being billed another, being locked into a term contract you didn’t ask for, and getting only a fraction of the speed they claim to sell.”

Canby is counted as one of CenturyLink’s 40Mbps-qualified customers, yet he actually receives less than 6Mbps service.

But that isn’t what CenturyLink tells the Federal Communications Commission. In a semi-annual broadband deployment report, the company claimed 51 percent of their customers in urban and suburban former Qwest service areas can subscribe to 40Mbps DSL or higher. But whether a customer is “qualified” to buy 40Mbps service is not the same as actually getting the speeds the company markets.

CenturyLink attempts to cover their claims with fine print attached to their FCC submission: “The numbers shown in this chart reflect the percentages of households served by DSLAMs that are capable of providing the specified broadband speeds.” (A DSLAM is a network device typically used to extend faster DSL speeds to customers by reducing the amount of copper wiring between the telephone company’s central office and the customer’s home. Customers in a neighborhood typically share space on a DSLAM, in effect sharing a single connection back to the phone company.)

“That’s clever of them, because of course the DSLAM is just one link in the chain that ends with the ‘last mile’ between that equipment and my home, and that is where CenturyLink’s phone plant is at its weakest,” Canby writes. “I spent 20 years at a phone company dealing with last-mile DSL speed issues, so they cannot fool me.”

Canby blames the condition of CenturyLink’s infrastructure between the DSLAM serving him and his home for the problems, as well as overselling DSL service by packing too many customers onto a single DSLAM.

“It might be 40Mbps service at the remote end, but it drops to around 6Mbps on a good day by the time it reaches my house,” Canby complains. “Once the sun goes down, the speed drops to 3Mbps, which is a classic case of overselling to me because too many people are trying to share one connection at the same time. It has been this way since 2008 according to my neighbors.”

Back then, phone service was provided by Qwest, the former Baby Bell providing service in 14 sparsely populated western U.S. states — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Qwest was acquired by CenturyLink in 2011.

CenturyLink has promised to improve broadband speeds for former Qwest customers, but much of what counts as progress has been in more urban areas, while rural customers continue to languish. The company admits just 21.9 percent of rural households can get 40Mbps service. Only 47.6% can buy 12Mbps, 61.3% can get 5Mbps, and 83% can subscribe to 1.5Mbps. That leaves 17% of former Qwest customers with no broadband options at all. CenturyLink did not break out the percentage of customers that meet the FCC’s 25Mbps minimum speed definition of broadband.

“This is why CenturyLink loses customers to cable operators who have no problems trying to deliver internet access over their network, because it was built to support more bandwidth,” Canby shares. “They can usually deliver the same internet speed to customers no matter how far out they live while phone companies deal with a network built for making phone calls, not data.”

Company officials recognize they could do better and have promised investors another 2.5 million customers will be able to reach 40Mbps by the end of 2017. By the end of the year after that, CenturyLink hopes to reach 85% of customers with VDSL2, bonding, and vectoring technology to achieve 40Mbps service for most customers in their top 25 markets. But rural customers are likely to left waiting longer because of the costs to upgrade Qwest’s copper-based network, especially in smaller states like Idaho, the Dakotas and Wyoming.

“The only answer is cable or fiber broadband, and if you live in a small community it could be years before CenturyLink gets around to you,” Canby writes. “If it’s the same story all over town, I’d start advocating for a community-owned fiber network and not sit around and wait for CenturyLink to act, especially if there is no cable company in town.”