The classic battle between cable MSO and telco broadband saw another skirmish this week. Cox Communications' Las Vegas division filed a suit against local telco CenturyLink over false statements it made about the dedicated speeds of the cable MSO's broadband service and how it prices DSL.
At issue is a TV commercial that CenturyLink began airing in November 2009 that said: "Unlike Cox, it's [CenturyLink's DSL service] consistently fast no matter how many people are online."
Cox shot back in its complaint that CenturyLink's claims were "patently false," adding that "cable and DSL Internet have more than one point in the network where customers' connections are aggregated, or 'shared,' prior to connecting to the Internet." In December, Cox brought its DOCSIS 3.0-based Ultimate Internet offering to Las Vegas, a service that offers 50 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up speeds.
In addition to the network sharing issue, Cox pointed out that CenturyLink's 10 Mbps DSL service ads incorrectly state that the customer only has to pay $29.95 per month, but in actuality the service costs $54.95 per month.
For more:
- Multichannel News has this article
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