Eric Fruits on Broadband Competition

ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits was quoted by StateScoop in a story about ICLE’s recent report on competition in broadband markets. You can read the full piece here.

A paper published this week by the International Center for Law and Economics found that some federal broadband competition policies may be working against each other and confusing those working in telecommunications.

Eric Fruits, a senior scholar at the International Center for Law and Economics and co-author of the paper, told StateScoop that since 2021, more households have connected to the internet than ever before, while broadband speeds have increased and service prices have fallen, he said.

“A lot has changed even in the past few years,” Fruits said. “We’ve had some pretty big broadband investments and that’s led to increases in speed. It’s just been a fairly steady march over the past decade or more of increasing speed, increasing usage.”

The paper also found that more households can buy internet service from multiple providers, compared to 2021, but those options are more scarce in rural communities, he said.