Time Warner Cable Doesn’t Believe Gigabit Internet Is In Demand

The FCC’s Chairman Julius Genachoski may have challenged the U.S. to his “Gigabit City Challenge,” which he’s hoping would spark at least one community in every state to offer gigabit Internet, but according to Time Warner Cable, it’s completely unnecessary.

According to Time Warner Cable’s CFO Irene Esteves who spoke at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, TWC doesn’t believe gigabit Internet is something its customers want. “We’re in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want,” she said when asked to comment on the Internet speeds Google Fiber is capable of providing. “We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers.”

Esteves follows up by saying TWC is certainly capable of delivering speeds that would be comparative to Google Fiber. “We’re already delivering 1 gigabit, 10 gigabit-per-second to our business customers, so we certainly have the capability of doing it.” Apparently, residential customers have shown little interest in the company’s top-tier Internet services, with “a very small fraction of our customer base” choosing gigabit Internet, Esteves says.