AT&T: You Don't Need More Bandwidth

If you've ever complained about a slow Internet connection, and wished for a faster one, you should stop complaining because more bandwidth won't get you more speed, according to AT&T. This twisted logic comes from AT&T COO Randall Stephenson at this week's Media, Entertainment and Telecommunications conference. ars technica reports that Stephenson told the conference that "having a 1.5 Mbps Internet capability is irrelevant because the backbone doesn't transport at those speeds." He added that even though AT&T offers only 1.5 megabit speeds, and Comcast offers 6 megabits, the effective speed is the same.

Not reported is whether the AT&T exec also had snake oil to sell.

I've used the Internet at 1.5 megabits and 6 megabits (my current connection) and I can vouch from personal experience that faster is...well, faster.

So why is AT&T saying that all speeds are the same? First off, it needs a way to fend off the Comcast competition, which beats its speeds, hands down.

And there's also Verizon, which is deploying fiber to the home, and so can deliver much higher bandwidth than AT&T, which is staying with copper to the home, and only deploying fiber to local nodes.I'm betting that most people won't buy AT&T's argument. I certainly don't.