Geoffrey Manne Interviewed for Marketplace’s Tech Report
International Center for Law and Economics’ Executive Director Geoffrey Manne was recently interviewed on Verizon’s acquisition of spectrum from cable operators by Marketplace’s Tech Report. The report, which aired Tuesday, December 28, explores Version’s various deals with cable companies to route around political blockages and acquire much needed spectrum. However, the Department of Justice recently decided to launch an antitrust invesitgation into the deals just days after AT&T dropped its bid for T-Mobile.
Manne injected some reality into the discussion:
In a sort of perfect world, you hear people say well, the spectrum that the cable companies own that they’re not using, smaller competitors should be buying that so they can compete with AT&T and Verizon and others. Well, that’s a nice idea, I guess, but the smaller companies aren’t buying it and Verizon snapped up that spectrum so that they could continue to provide the level of service that they’d like to.
Listen to the embedded player below or head to the web site to hear the entire segment.