ICLE: FCC Should Modernize Communications Policy for Converged Markets
WASHINGTON (May 21, 2026) — The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has long regulated communications technologies in separate silos, with different rules for broadband, wireless, satellite, broadcast, and video markets. But technological convergence has eroded those distinctions and made many services direct substitutes for one another, the International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) said in comments filed today.
The comments, submitted in response to the FCC’s request for input on the state of competition in the communications marketplace, argue that this growing substitutability increasingly constrains firms’ ability to raise prices, reduce quality, or act like monopolists.
But ICLE cautions that convergence does not eliminate the basic economics of network deployment. Broadband infrastructure remains costly to build, maintain, and upgrade, and policies that focus only on maximizing the number of competitors could undermine the investment needed to support next-generation services, including artificial intelligence applications.
The comments urge the FCC to evaluate markets holistically, reduce barriers to deployment, and ensure merger review focuses on actual competitive effects, rather than unrelated policy objectives. ICLE also calls for video-market reforms that reflect modern competition, while reducing outdated regulatory asymmetries among broadcasters, streaming platforms, cable providers, and other digital distributors.
“Ultimately, the FCC’s most important contribution to consumer welfare is not any single intervention, but the quality and consistency of the analytical framework it applies across proceedings,” said Jeffrey Westling, senior innovation policy scholar at ICLE. “Communications markets work best when policy is predictable, rewards investment, applies equivalent rules to equivalent competitors regardless of technology, and resists using regulatory leverage as a substitute for competitive discipline.”
To interview Westling, contact Jim Fellinger at [email protected]. Download the full comments here.
About ICLE
The International Center for Law & Economics is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center working with a roster of more than one-hundred academic affiliates and research centers from around the globe. ICLE scholars promote the use of law and economics methodologies to inform public policy debates.