In late September, cable industry engineers unveiled a modern technological marvel inside Washington’s convention center. Alarmingly, a high-stakes lobbying fight between America’s telecommunications giants might prevent this innovation breakthrough from ever reaching our living rooms.

At the Society of Cable Television Engineers’ annual trade show, Charter Communications and chipmaker Broadcom demonstrated an experimental Wi-Fi router that hit speeds approaching 10 gigabits per second. For context, that’s more bandwidth than you’d use streaming 600 different Netflix shows — in full 4K resolution — simultaneously. Practically, it means lightning-fast file downloads, photo uploads and daily phone backups, and would be a complete game-changer in high-traffic settings like stadiums, hotels

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