Summary

“STELA (and its predecessors) as well as the Cable Act were written to promote competition and to protect consumers in nascent markets. But since their enactment the market has
fundamentally changed, becoming quite competitive. Rather than continuing to try to tweak the laws of a bygone era, Congress should abandon these disparately applied, technology specific regulations and embrace the default tool for dealing with market power across the economy: antitrust law. Antitrust is the best tool for policing market power in evolving (if not
perfectly competitive) markets, to ensure that distributors with market power do not use their power to harm consumers, while recognizing the benefits that come from experimentation in new technologies and business models for delivering video content to consumers…”

Summary

“The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been outdated since the moment it was signed into law, and we applaud the Committee for taking up the task of bringing it up to date. The Act’s siloed approach reflects the assumptions of the pre-Internet era, and is completely out of sync with the market it now governs. The sooner it is replaced with a technologically neutral act focused on how regulated conduct affects consumer welfare, the better, as we argued in our earlier comments in this ongoing inquiry…”

Summary

“Twenty years ago, Democrats and Republicans agreed on the need to refocus communications competition policy on promoting competition in an era of convergence, focusing on effects rather than formalism. Unfortunately, that focus was lost in the sausage-making process of legislation – and the FCC has been increasingly adrift ever since. The FCC has not waited for Congress to act, and has instead found creative ways to sidestep the formalist structure of the Act. It is high time for Congress to reassert its authority and to craft a new act focused on the effects of competition as a durable basis for regulation.

The antitrust statutes have not been fundamentally modified in over a century because Congress has not needed to do so: antitrust law has evolved on top of them through a mix of court decisions and doctrinal development articulated by the antitrust agencies. At the heart of this evolution of common law has been one guiding concern: effects on consumer welfare, seen through the lens of law and economics. The same concern and same analytical lens should guide the re-write of the Communications Act that is, by now, two decades overdue.

While refocusing competition regulation on effects, Congress should give equal focus to minimizing remaining barriers to competition. In particular, that means minimizing regulatory uncertainty (and, in particular, avoiding any return to mostly archaic Title II regulations); maximizing the amount of spectrum available; simplifying the construction and upgrading of wireless towers to maximize the capacity of wireless broadband; and promoting infrastructure policy at all levels of government that makes deployment cost-effective…”

For those in the DC area interested in telecom regulation, there is another great event opportunity coming up next week.

Join TechFreedom on Thursday, December 19, the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, AT&T’s negotiated settlement of antitrust charges brought by the Department of Justice that gave AT&T a legal monopoly in most of the U.S. in exchange for a commitment to provide universal service.

The Commitment is hailed by many not just as a milestone in the public interest but as the bedrock of U.S. communications policy. Others see the settlement as the cynical exploitation of lofty rhetoric to establish a tightly regulated monopoly — and the beginning of decades of cozy regulatory capture that stifled competition and strangled innovation.

So which was it? More importantly, what can we learn from the seventy year period before the 1984 break-up of AT&T, and the last three decades of efforts to unleash competition? With fewer than a third of Americans relying on traditional telephony and Internet-based competitors increasingly driving competition, what does universal service mean in the digital era? As Congress contemplates overhauling the Communications Act, how can policymakers promote universal service through competition, by promoting innovation and investment? What should a new Kingsbury Commitment look like?

Following a luncheon keynote address by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, a diverse panel of experts moderated by TechFreedom President Berin Szoka will explore these issues and more. The panel includes:

• Harold Feld, Public Knowledge
• Rob Atkinson, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
• Hance Haney, Discovery Institute
• Jeff Eisenach, American Enterprise Institute
• Fred Campbell, Former FCC Commissioner

Space is limited so RSVP now if you plan to attend in person. A live stream of the event will be available on this page. You can follow the conversation on Twitter on the #Kingsbury100 hashtag.

When:
Thursday, December 19, 2013
11:30 – 12:00 Registration & lunch
12:00 – 1:45 Event & live stream

The live stream will begin on this page at noon Eastern.

Where:
The Methodist Building
100 Maryland Ave NE
Washington D.C. 20002

Questions?
Email [email protected].

Filed under: federal communications commission, net neutrality, regulation, technology, telecommunications, wireless Tagged: at&t, Berin Szoka, Commissioner Pai, Federal Communications Commission, Fred Campbell, Hance Haney, Harold Feld, Jeff Eisenach, Kingsbury Commitment, Rob Atkinson, techfreedom

Summary

Increasingly, the wired and wireless networks are converging in architecture and function. For example, the further fiber moves towards the customer, the more wireless capabilities are available in cellular networks. As wireless offers more bandwidth, it can deliver video and other functions previously thought to require more substantial broadband pipes. The question then arises, to what extent are wireless offerings substitutable for wireline services, and vice versa? The 2013 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Spectrum Policy (AIRS), “Spectrum Policy for the Wired Network,” met on November 13-15, 2013 to consider what spectrum policies would foster best the goals of a robust, reliable and effective communications system in the United States.

The 24 leading communications policy experts who met at the Aspen Wye River Conference Center in Queenstown, Maryland began by looking at the characteristics of network architecture, both wired and wireless, that are relevant to a robust communications network. In the course of this exploration, the group considered public goods that need to reach consumers, and the desire for consumer choice of competitive services. They also investigated what essential elements of the wired network are required by public policy, and which of these can wireless services substitute for. The overall goal was to discover how spectrum services and spectrum policy can advance overall communications policy goals, e.g., robust, reliable, and effective communications with choice where possible.

As the following report details, the discussions were lively and knowledgeable. Throughout the report, the Roundtable rapporteur, Geoff Manne, sets forth a number of recommendations that he gleaned from the conference dialogue, specifically concerning the issues of rural communications, public services, and competition. While these recommendations generally reflect the sense of the meeting, there were some opponents to the viewpoints recorded and there were no votes taken. Accordingly, participation in the dialogue should not be construed as agreement with any particular statement in the report by the participant or his or her employer.

The debates over mobile spectrum aggregation and the auction rules for the FCC’s upcoming incentive auction — like all regulatory rent-seeking — can be farcical. One aspect of the debate in particular is worth highlighting, as it puts into stark relief the tendentiousness of self-interested companies making claims about the public interestedness of their preferred policies: The debate over how and whether to limit the buying and aggregating of lower frequency (in this case 600 MHz) spectrum.

Read the full piece here.

I have a new post up at TechPolicyDaily.com, excerpted below, in which I discuss the growing body of (surprising uncontroversial) work showing that broadband in the US compares favorably to that in the rest of the world. My conclusion, which is frankly more cynical than I like, is that concern about the US “falling behind” is manufactured debate. It’s a compelling story that the media likes and that plays well for (some) academics.

Before the excerpt, I’d also like to quote one of today’s headlines from Slashdot:

“Google launched the citywide Wi-Fi network with much fanfare in 2006 as a way for Mountain View residents and businesses to connect to the Internet at no cost. It covers most of the Silicon Valley city and worked well until last year, as Slashdot readers may recall, when connectivity got rapidly worse. As a result, Mountain View is installing new Wi-Fi hotspots in parts of the city to supplement the poorly performing network operated by Google. Both the city and Google have blamed the problems on the design of the network. Google, which is involved in several projects to provide Internet access in various parts of the world, said in a statement that it is ‘actively in discussions with the Mountain View city staff to review several options for the future of the network.’”

The added emphasis is mine. It is added to draw attention to the simple point that designing and building networks is hard. Like, really really hard. Folks think that it’s easy, because they have small networks in their homes or offices — so surely they can scale to a nationwide network without much trouble. But all sorts of crazy stuff starts to happen when we substantially increase the scale of IP networks. This is just one of the very many things that should give us pause about calls for the buildout of a government run or sponsored Internet infrastructure.

Another of those things is whether there’s any need for that. Which brings us to my TechPolicyDaily.com post:

In the week or so since TPRC, I’ve found myself dwelling on an observation I made during the conference: how much agreement there was, especially on issues usually thought of as controversial. I want to take a few paragraphs to consider what was probably the most surprisingly non-controversial panel of the conference, the final Internet Policy panel, in which two papers – one by ITIF’s Rob Atkinson and the other by James McConnaughey from NTIA – were presented that showed that broadband Internet service in US (and Canada, though I will focus on the US) compares quite well to that offered in the rest of the world. […]

But the real question that this panel raised for me was: given how well the US actually compares to other countries, why does concern about the US falling behind dominate so much discourse in this area? When you get technical, economic, legal, and policy experts together in a room – which is what TPRC does – the near consensus seems to be that the “kids are all right”; but when you read the press, or much of the high-profile academic literature, “the sky is falling.”

The gap between these assessments could not be larger. I think that we need to think about why this is. I hate to be cynical or disparaging – especially since I know strong advocates on both sides and believe that their concerns are sincere and efforts earnest. But after this year’s conference, I’m having trouble shaking the feeling that ongoing concern about how US broadband stacks up to the rest of the world is a manufactured debate. It’s a compelling, media- and public-friendly, narrative that supports a powerful political agenda. And the clear incentives, for academics and media alike, are to find problems and raise concerns. […]

Compare this to the Chicken Little narrative. As I was writing this, I received a message from a friend asking my views on an Economist blog post that shares data from the ITU’s just-released Measuring the Information Society 2013 report. This data shows that the US has some of the highest prices for pre-paid handset-based mobile data around the world. That is, it reports the standard narrative – and it does so without looking at the report’s methodology. […]

Even more problematic than what the Economist blog reports, however, is what it doesn’t report. [The report contains data showing the US has some of the lowest cost fixed broadband and mobile broadband prices in the world. See the full post at TechPolicyDaily.com for the numbers.]

Now, there are possible methodological problems with these rankings, too. My point here isn’t to debate over the relative position of the United States. It’s to ask why the “story” about this report cherry-picks the alarming data, doesn’t consider its methodology, and ignores the data that contradicts its story.

Of course, I answered that question above: It’s a compelling, media- and public-friendly, narrative that supports a powerful political agenda. And the clear incentives, for academics and media alike, are to find problems and raise concerns. Manufacturing debate sells copy and ads, and advances careers.

Filed under: federal communications commission, net neutrality, regulation, technology, telecommunications, truth on the market, wireless Tagged: Broadband, FCC, Internet Access, Network neutrality, rankings, TPRC