When does a “directions” button become a competition-law violation? When it points to Google Maps, according to the European Commission. A law meant to police search rankings is becoming a license to police the whole page.

On July 23, the Commission fined Alphabet €460 million for favoring nine of its own services on Google’s search results page: comparison shopping, flights, trains, hotels, local places, Google Maps, a translation box, sports scores, and even the games that appear when you search for “solitaire.”

The Commission’s cease-and-desist order requires Google to stop “displaying interactive pointers to its own distinct or additional services on the [Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP)], such as in tabs or in links to these services when a user clicks on a reservations, directions or any other button” (paragraph 712(c)).

That raises a basic question about the reach of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Article 6(5) prohibits designated “gatekeepers”—large platforms subject to the law—from giving their own services preferential treatment in “ranking or related indexing and crawling.” These processes determine the order of search results and collect and organize the information behind them.

But the Commission’s order also restricts where Google places links and buttons for its own services on the page—even when those features don’t appear to rank search results.

Does “ranking” now cover anything that appears on the screen? If so, gatekeepers could be barred from featuring any of their own products or services in drop-down menus on their own websites. We argue that this stretches the DMA’s definitions of “ranking” and “search results” too far, with no clear limiting principle.

Read the full piece here.

Brussels’ latest competition guidelines should probably come with a warning label. Countries borrowing them risk importing dubious economics, remedies designed for Europe’s very specific institutional problems, and a trade fight with Washington.

On Sept. 3, after a three-year process, the European Commission adopted its first guidelines on exclusionary abuses under Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Article 102 prohibits companies from abusing a dominant market position, including through practices that improperly shut out competitors. The guidelines replace the 2008 Guidance Paper on Enforcement Priorities for Exclusionary Abuses. The question here is whether jurisdictions in Latin America, Asia, and Africa should follow their approach.

The reach of the “Brussels effect”—the influence of European Union (EU) rules abroad—is debatable, but the influence itself is clear. Since the EU adopted the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes special obligations on large digital platforms designated as “gatekeepers,” the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) has overhauled its rules along similar lines. Japan has enacted its Mobile Software Competition Act, while Brazil, Vietnam, and others have debated their own ex ante regimes—rules that apply upfront, rather than through enforcement after alleged misconduct.

Of course, competition agencies can borrow another jurisdiction’s guidelines more easily than its regulations: Guidelines look like technical advice, attract less political scrutiny, and require no new legislation.

And, indeed, some provisions may be worth borrowing, but wholesale adoption risks importing dubious economics and ill-suited responses to Europe’s political and institutional problems. Those flaws could prove especially harmful elsewhere, while adopting Brussels’ approach to digital rules now carries a concrete risk of trade retaliation.

Read the full piece here.

The most valuable skill in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) may not be coding, prompt engineering, or any of the other competencies appearing in job listings. It may be the ability to figure out which skills will be valuable next. Half a century ago, Theodore Schultz had a name for something much like this: the ability to deal with disequilibria—situations in which changing circumstances make old arrangements less useful.

Schultz’s 1975 article, “The Value of the Ability to Deal with Disequilibria,” wasn’t about AI, or even primarily about technological change. It was about a recurring feature of any dynamic economy. Circumstances change. Old ways of using resources stop making sense. New opportunities emerge. And people differ—sometimes substantially—in their ability to perceive those changes and respond.

Schultz’s insight was that this capacity to adapt is itself a form of economically valuable human capital—the knowledge and skills people bring to their work. That insight has rarely seemed more relevant than it does today.

Read the full piece here.

Europe’s browser revolution appears to have left most browsers exactly where it found them. The European Commission is celebrating a “surge” in alternatives. The browsing data suggest a ripple.

In April, the Commission reviewed the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and pronounced it “fit for purpose.” “Alternative browsers and search engines are being increasingly chosen by users as defaults on their devices,” its announcement crowed. The review report went further: “alternative browsers have reported a surge in use thanks to choice screens”—prompts that ask users to choose a browser rather than stick with the preselected default. But the report offered no figures to show that surge.

Mozilla, which makes Firefox, stepped in to make the Commission’s case. The company counted more than six million Firefox selections through the DMA’s choice screens. It also publicized an estimate that Firefox use on iPhones was 113% higher in the European Union (EU) than it would have been without those screens.

Those numbers sure seem like a surge. We wanted to know how much of Europe’s mobile browsing actually moved.

Using public browser-share data from 11 countries, we found barely any movement. The default browsers’ combined share of mobile browsing changed by less than one percentage point. Firefox’s share rose by between one-fifth and two-fifths of a percentage point.

Read the full piece here.

Predicting the end of humanity is one way to get a headline. For artificial intelligence (AI) developers, it may also be one way to hand a future plaintiff evidence.

Developers have become some of the loudest voices warning about their own systems. Predictions that AI could drive humanity to extinction—once widely dismissed as absurd—now make front-page news.

Those warnings raise an awkward question for tort law, which governs civil liability for harms: If developers publicly acknowledge their systems’ risks, could those statements help establish the standard of care—the precautions the law expects them to take? And if the predicted harm exceeds anything they could pay, how much protection can liability actually offer?

Read the full piece here.

I. Introduction

The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) respectfully submits these comments in the above-captioned docket. ICLE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that applies law & economics analysis to legal and policy questions, including communications policy. We support View A of the proposal for Agenda Item 9.2 of the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27), WAC-27_073.[1]

The proposal would establish provisional equivalent power flux-density (epfd) limits—a measure of satellite interference—under Article 22 of the International Telecommunication Union’s Radio Regulations. Those limits would reflect protection criteria the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already adopted. Together with the accompanying Agenda Item 10 proposal, View A would also place possible reform of Radio Regulation No. 22.2 and its associated provisions on the agenda for the study cycle following WRC-27.[2]

The case for updating these limits is substantial. Article 22 governs how much interference non-geostationary satellite systems may impose on geostationary networks, whose satellites remain over a fixed point on Earth. Its numerical limits date to the 1997 and 2000 World Radiocommunication Conferences and reflect deployment assumptions that predate commercial traffic at scale on any non-geostationary fixed-satellite system. The Commission addressed this mismatch domestically in its Modernizing Spectrum Sharing for Satellite Broadband Report and Order, released in May 2026. That order adopted performance-based protection criteria as an alternative to epfd compliance.[3] The international rules governing the same interference relationship now lag their domestic counterparts and warrant an update.

Our support rests on two qualifications. First, ICLE takes no position on the engineering dispute between View A’s proponents and those supporting View B, which would add a second layer of protection to the same limits.[4] Second, our support concerns the proposal’s structure: its grounding in adopted domestic criteria, its transition design, and its built-in mechanism for permanent reform. These comments evaluate those features without resolving the technical disagreement.

II. The Costs of Outdated Interference Limits

Article 22’s epfd limits began as a provisional measure at the 1997 World Radiocommunication Conference. The 2000 conference revised them to ensure continued protection of geostationary networks in the fixed-satellite and broadcasting-satellite services.[5] But the revised limits reflect a deployment environment that no longer exists. At the time, no large non-geostationary system operated commercially in the affected bands. The drafters therefore relied on projected parameters to set protection criteria for systems that had yet to launch.[6]

Subsequent conferences recognized the need for review but left the limits unchanged. The 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference directed the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) to study the epfd limits, including those referenced in Radio Regulation No. 22.5K, to ensure continued protection of geostationary networks. It instructed ITU-R to report the results to WRC-27 without changing the regulations.[7] Earlier, the director’s report to the 2015 conference had called for reviewing or confirming the assumptions underlying the existing values and the power limits in Annex 1 to Resolution 76. These studies produced analysis but no revised limits. The rules governing the central interference relationship in the fixed-satellite service still reflect a study cycle that long predates operational non-geostationary systems.

The industry’s economics make outdated rules costly. A non-geostationary satellite operator must build and launch a viable initial constellation before selling its first connection.[8] Its capital commitment precedes revenue by years. With that cost structure, regulatory uncertainty raises the return investors demand to bear the risk. Uncertain market-access terms can increase capital costs, delay deployment, and cause a prospective system to lose an investor.

Geostationary operators face a similar problem. They plan over decades and must account for the risk that interference will degrade their networks throughout that period. Both groups must make long-term investments under rules whose future application remains uncertain.

Static limits create additional costs as satellite deployments evolve. Limits that are too loose allow aggregate interference to erode geostationary link quality. Limits that are too strict bar deployments that current measurements would support. Neither error necessarily appears in a single filing, but both can accumulate over time, discourage investment, and weaken deployment incentives.

Article 22 exists to manage interference between satellite systems.[9] Its limits should therefore reflect the interference those systems actually produce. As the gap between calibration and application grows, the rules increasingly protect outdated assumptions rather than operating networks. The 1997 and 2000 limits now govern systems their drafters never envisioned, without an effective mechanism to revisit the assumptions behind them.

III. View A’s Framework for Modernization

View A of the Agenda Item 9.2 proposal addresses the mismatch between outdated regulatory limits and current operational and economic realities through three structural features. It draws its limits from protection criteria the Commission has already adopted, preserves existing investments while giving operators clear rules for future commitments, and pairs provisional limits with a study mandate for permanent reform.

First, View A derives its limits from the protection criteria in the Spectrum Sharing Order and U.S. contributions to Working Party 4A, the ITU-R group responsible for fixed-satellite service matters.[10] The Commission adopted performance-based protection criteria as an alternative to epfd compliance in the covered U.S. Ku-band and Ka-band downlink bands—the frequencies satellites use to transmit to Earth. Those criteria evaluate interference through its effects on data throughput and service availability, accounting for satellites’ orbital positions, rather than relying on a single legacy constraint.[11]

Using those criteria for provisional international limits would both reflect how non-geostationary systems actually operate and align the domestic and international rules governing the same interference relationship. That alignment matters for an industry that requires substantial capital commitments amid considerable uncertainty. An operator designing and deploying a costly global system could work from a common set of protection criteria, reducing compliance costs and the ambiguity that encourages fragmented regulatory requirements.

Second, the provisional limits would become available to new and existing filings on Nov. 13, 2027. Systems for which the ITU received complete coordination or notification information before that date, and that comply with the prior Article 22 limits, could continue to use those limits. Systems that update their filings under the provisional limits would retain their original filing priority upon a favorable finding.

This transition accommodates both existing and prospective investments. It protects firms that have already committed resources to completed filings and coordination work from retroactive disruption. It also gives prospective investors a rule they can assess before committing capital. Clear expectations about how regulators will judge interference can encourage investment alongside improvements in the rules themselves. Preserving the position of operators that participated under the older limits also avoids discouraging future investment through fears that later revisions will upset established expectations.

Third, the proposal creates a path for further correction. It pairs the interim limits with a study mandate directed toward the 2031 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-31). The studies would cover reform of Radio Regulation No. 22.2 and its associated provisions, including the epfd limits and Resolution 76.[12]

A scheduled review gives affected parties a credible opportunity to raise concerns and develop evidence for reform. The proposal expressly recognizes that further studies may be warranted, and the next conference would have both a mandate and a record on which to act. Permanent limits encourage parties to treat the numbers as final and litigate their defects later. Provisional limits with a scheduled review encourage parties to produce evidence that can inform the next decision.

The proposal also promotes consistency across bands. Protection standards for modern systems should not depend on which conference last revised a particular band’s rules. The Spectrum Sharing Order’s performance-based approach provides consistent protection criteria across the covered Ku-band and Ka-band downlink bands. That includes the lower and upper Ka-band provisions, whose differing limits the proposal identifies as unjustified by the studies.[13] Consistent criteria simplify compliance for global systems and reduce the need to defend outdated, band-specific judgments in each negotiation.

IV. Addressing View B Through Scheduled Review

View B would adopt View A’s limits but add epfd limits that apply 100% of the time.[14] Its proponents argue that View A relies on only one element of the Commission’s protection framework—the criterion governing service unavailability—and therefore leaves some interference risks unaddressed. Their concern centers on “in-line” events, when a non-geostationary satellite passes directly through the center of a geostationary link’s antenna beam. View B would expressly cap interference during those alignments rather than leave it as a residual risk.

The disagreement has an economic dimension. Each protection criterion accounts for a different type of failure across a different range of interference events. A criterion that applies for a specified percentage of time focuses on interference during that period; an all-times criterion also constrains events outside it. The latter addresses “tail risk”—less frequent events that may cause substantial harm. The Commission’s adopted framework combines assessments of data throughput, service availability, and orbital geometry.[15] View B argues that the provisional international limits should incorporate a similar combination of protections.

View A, meanwhile, draws on adopted domestic criteria and U.S. contributions to Working Party 4A, giving it an evidentiary foundation.[16] Deployment experience can help establish whether those limits adequately address tail risk, including the aggregate behavior of constellations at scales the 2000-era drafters did not model. The WRC-31 study mandate provides a route for bringing that evidence into the record. Adopting provisional limits now, with a scheduled review, allows modernization to proceed while preserving an opportunity to refine the rules as evidence develops.

That provisional structure supports choosing View A without resolving the engineering dispute as a permanent matter. The Commission can assess which approach the current record supports while preserving a path to correction if new evidence warrants one. View A expressly provides that path.[17] On the structural grounds addressed in these comments, it offers the more reasonable approach at this stage: adopt evidence-based provisional limits and examine View B’s concerns through the scheduled review.

V. Mutual Protection and a Credible Review Process

View A protects both geostationary and non-geostationary systems. Geostationary operators receive protection criteria grounded in adopted standards rather than legacy assumptions, along with a scheduled review that can strengthen those criteria if the evidence warrants.[18] Non-geostationary entrants receive clear rules before committing capital and retain their filing priority when they update under the provisional limits and obtain a favorable finding.[19] Existing systems for which the ITU received complete filings before Nov. 13, 2027, and that comply with the prior Article 22 limits, can continue to use those limits. Each party’s protection rests on the rules themselves, giving operators clear rights rather than requiring them to rely on one another’s restraint.

A balanced regime also builds institutional credibility and encourages participation in future reviews. Spectrum governance at the International Telecommunication Union proceeds through agreement among more than 190 administrations.[20] Delegates must demonstrate to their domestic constituents how the rules protect their systems. A proposal that makes those protections clear to incumbents, entrants, and investors gives delegations a basis for agreement while preserving political capital for issues where interests conflict.[21]

A review process that keeps pace with industry developments also better reflects investment needs. Rules that preserve an outdated status quo invite parties to reopen the same disputes at each conference. Clear, mutual protections build trust and can make future negotiations more efficient.

The United States should take care at implementation to preserve the limits’ provisional character. Both sides may come to treat the adopted numbers as permanent and resist studies that could change them. The Commission’s approach offers a useful model: it supplements the legacy epfd framework with alternative criteria tied to measurable effects.[22] The international framework should preserve that connection between evidence and protection.

The United States should therefore support the provisional limits and the study mandate as a single package. The review provides a path to correct limits that prove inadequate, while the limits provide an operational framework whose performance the review can assess. Keeping the two together gives operators rules they can invest under today and a credible process for improving those rules tomorrow.

VI. Conclusion

The Commission should support View A in WAC-27_073 and preserve its three structural commitments throughout the interagency process. The provisional Article 22 limits should draw on the Commission’s adopted protection criteria, aligning domestic and international rules for the same interference relationship.[23] The transition should protect existing investments through grandfathering and filing-priority preservation while giving prospective investors clear rules before they commit capital.[24] The WRC-31 study mandate should remain integral to the package, ensuring a scheduled review informed by deployment evidence.[25]

Together, these commitments address the costs of outdated limits: uncertain investment conditions, fragmented compliance requirements, and protections that no longer reflect operating systems. They give both geostationary incumbents and non-geostationary entrants clear protections while building the trust needed for future negotiations. The review also provides a credible forum to examine View B’s concerns without requiring the Commission to resolve the engineering dispute permanently now.

View A offers a path from decades-old assumptions to limits grounded in adopted criteria and open to revision as evidence develops. Its structure preserves interference protection while enabling modernization, without treating any operator’s preferred limits as final. The Commission should carry the provisional limits and study mandate forward as a single package.

[1] WRC-27 Advisory Committee, Draft Proposal, Agenda Item 9.2, WAC-27_073 (Sept. 29, 2026), reprinted in FCC Office of International Affairs, Public Notice, DA 26-1052, attach. A, at 78–96 (Sept. 29, 2026) (printed pagination) [hereinafter WAC-27_073].

[2] See id., View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], recognizing para. (a), at 85, further resolves, at 86; WRC-27 Advisory Committee, Draft Proposal, Agenda Item 10, WAC-27_074 (Sept. 29, 2026), reprinted in FCC Office of International Affairs, Public Notice, DA 26-1052, attach. A, at 97–100 (Sept. 29, 2026), Draft New Resolution [PP-1], resolves, agenda item 1.x, at 98, Draft New Resolution [RR No. 22.2 REFORM], resolves to invite ITU-R paras. 1–2, at 100 [hereinafter WAC-27_074].

[3] Modernizing Spectrum Sharing for Satellite Broadband, Report and Order, FCC 26-26, paras. 3, 14, 81 & n.285, 90, app. A (May 1, 2026), 91 Fed. Reg. 26,928 (May 13, 2026) (amending 47 C.F.R. § 25.146(a)(3) but delaying the amendments’ effective date until a further Federal Register notice) [hereinafter Spectrum Sharing Order].

[4] See WAC-27_073, supra note 1, introductory statement, at 78–80.

[5] Id., View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], considering paras. (a)–(c), at 84; see also id., View A, Background, at 81–82.

[6] See Gerald Adams, Out of Orbit: How Outdated Spectrum Rules Hold Back Satellite Broadband (Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ. Aug. 12, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/resources/out-of-orbit-how-outdated-spectrum-rules-hold-back-satellite-broadband.

[7] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, View A, Background, third–fourth paras., at 81, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], considering further paras. (a)–(c), at 84.

[8] See Kristian Stout & Michael Calabrese, Competition in the Low-Earth-Orbit Satellite Industry, Truth on the Mkt. (Oct. 10, 2023), https://truthonthemarket.com/2023/10/10/competition-in-the-low-earth-orbit-satellite-industry.

[9] See Adams, supra note 6.

[10] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, introductory statement, at 78, View A, Background, at 82–83.

[11] Spectrum Sharing Order, supra note 3, paras. 3, 14, 50, 54, 58–63, 81 & n.285, app. A (amending 47 C.F.R. § 25.146(a)(3)).

[12] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], recognizing para. (a), at 85, further resolves, at 86; WAC-27_074, supra note 2, Draft New Resolution [RR No. 22.2 REFORM], resolves to invite ITU-R paras. 1–2, invites the 2031 World Radiocommunication Conference, at 100.

[13] Comments of the International Center for Law & Economics, Modernizing Spectrum Sharing for Satellite Broadband, SB Docket No. 25-157 (July 28, 2025), https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2025-EPFD-Comments.pdf; see also Spectrum Sharing Order, supra note 3, paras. 61, 82; WAC-27_073, supra note 1, View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], considering further paras. (d)–(f), at 85.

[14] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, introductory statement (View B discussion), at 78–80.

[15] Spectrum Sharing Order, supra note 3, paras. 3, 14, 47, 57, 63, app. A (amending 47 C.F.R. § 25.146(a)(3)).

[16] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, introductory statement, at 78, View A, Background, at 82–83, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], recognizing para. (a), at 85, further resolves, at 86; WAC-27_074, supra note 2, Draft New Resolution [RR No. 22.2 REFORM], resolves to invite ITU-R paras. 1–2, at 100.

[17] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], recognizing para. (a), at 85, further resolves, instructs the Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau, at 86.

[18] Id., introductory statement, at 78, View A, Background, at 82–83, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], further resolves, at 86.

[19] Id., View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], resolves paras. 1, 4–5, at 86.

[20] See Gerald Adams et al., Low Earth Orbit Satellites: Policies to Promote Spectrum Sharing, Foster Competition, and Close Digital Divides (Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ. & New America Oct. 2025), https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Low_Earth_Orbit_Satellites_FINAL.pdf.

[21] See WAC-27_073, supra note 1, View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], resolves paras. 1–5, further resolves, at 86.

[22] Spectrum Sharing Order, supra note 3, paras. 3, 14, 81 & n.285, 83, app. A.

[23] WAC-27_073, supra note 1, introductory statement, at 78, View A, Background, at 82–83.

[24] Id., View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], resolves paras. 1, 4–5, at 86.

[25] Id., View A, Draft New Resolution [Provisional Article 22 limits], recognizing para. (a), at 85, further resolves, at 86; WAC-27_074, supra note 2, Draft New Resolution [PP-1], resolves, agenda item 1.x, at 98, Draft New Resolution [RR No. 22.2 REFORM], resolves to invite ITU-R paras. 1–2, invites the 2031 World Radiocommunication Conference, at 100.

I. Introduction and Overview

The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submits these comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on ensuring children’s safe use of screens.[1] ICLE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that applies law & economics methods to public policy. Its work promotes sound economic analysis and consumer welfare, particularly in dynamic, technology-driven markets such as telecommunications.

ICLE welcomes the FCC’s efforts to modernize and improve the E-Rate program. Connecting schools and libraries is a critical mission of the Universal Service Fund (USF). Through E-Rate, people who cannot afford or access broadband at home—or choose not to subscribe—can still benefit from connectivity.

Those benefits come at a cost. When E-Rate spending adds no value or harms its intended beneficiaries, consumers bear a higher tax on their broadband bills without a meaningful benefit.[2] The FCC should therefore review its rules, ensure that funding serves the purposes Congress prescribed, and limit spending that does not.

Subsidies are generally defensible only as a second-best policy tool—when better options are unavailable. That constraint matters even more when a tax on a particular service, rather than general tax revenue, funds the subsidy: Every dollar of support comes from the same subscribers the program seeks to serve. Among the programs USF supports, E-Rate is nevertheless the least objectionable. Its focus on connecting schoolchildren targets a benefit that plausibly exceeds the burden on ratepayers.

The FCC should not, however, use this proceeding to impose restrictions on connectivity in schools and libraries that exceed its statutory authority and do little to advance the program’s goals. E-Rate focuses on access to broadband services. Congress limited its content restrictions to specific categories it deemed harmful to minors; it did not grant the FCC broad authority to dictate how schools and libraries use that connectivity.

Even if Congress had granted that authority, current evidence suggests that screen-time limits do little, if anything, to improve outcomes or protect students. The FCC should focus on running E-Rate efficiently and targeting support to schools that need help connecting their students, rather than mandating how they use those tools and services.

II. Preserve Access While Targeting E-Rate Support

E-Rate’s statutory purpose is to connect schools and libraries, not to guarantee better educational outcomes. The FCC should assess the program on that basis and target support to institutions that need it to maintain affordable access. This approach would preserve the connectivity Congress requires while reducing unnecessary spending and the burden on telecommunications consumers.

A. E-Rate’s Statutory Purpose Is Access

Section 254 of the Communications Act frames the schools-and-libraries program in terms of access. Among the universal service principles Congress established, schools, classrooms, and libraries “should have access to advanced telecommunications services.”[3] The statute directs the FCC to “enhance, to the extent technically feasible and economically reasonable, access to advanced telecommunications and information services” for elementary and secondary school classrooms and libraries.[4] The “educational purposes” language in § 254(h)(1)(B) defines which services qualify for a discount, regardless of educational outcomes. This focus reflected conditions when Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996: Only 14% of classrooms had internet access, and legislators viewed that access as critical to preparing students for the future.[5]

The FCC’s goals likewise focus on access. When it modernized E-Rate in 2014, the agency adopted three performance goals: ensuring affordable access to high-speed broadband sufficient to support digital learning, maximizing cost-effectiveness, and simplifying the application process.[6] None measures student learning. The NPRM acknowledges that neither Congress nor the FCC has set goals for educational outcomes.[7]

Some nevertheless defend E-Rate as an investment in learning itself. But empirical studies find no statistically significant improvements in student achievement in mathematics, reading, or science, even after allowing for delayed effects.[8] If improved educational outcomes is essential to justify continued spending, the program should end.

Judged by access, however, E-Rate has largely succeeded. Today, 99.3% of America’s schools have a high-speed broadband connection, and at least some would lack that connectivity without the subsidy. Maintaining connectivity, however, requires recurring spending. Most E-Rate funding now supports existing connections rather than new ones.

In funding year 2025, applicants requested about $1.8 billion for Category One services—the recurring internet access and data transmission services that connect schools and libraries to the network.[9] They requested another $1.4 billion for Category Two internal connections, including Wi-Fi access points, routers, and switches that wear out and require replacement every few years.[10]

Many districts could absorb these costs without E-Rate. Others could not. Rural areas face higher average costs of providing broadband and, consequently, higher prices. Low-income communities have limited local tax bases. In both, recurring service costs can exceed what local budgets can support. Without E-Rate, schools and libraries risk letting connections degrade, delaying equipment replacement, or switching to lower-capacity service—potentially undoing gains the program has already funded.

B. Target E-Rate Support to Institutions That Need It

E-Rate’s value lies in the connectivity it provides to students. But many schools can meet their students’ technology needs without shifting those costs to telecommunications consumers nationwide. If the FCC narrows the program, it should focus on whether recipients need the support. The strongest case for subsidies arises where the market would not otherwise sustain affordable service. That supports targeting assistance to institutions that need it, rather than subsidizing districts that could readily pay for connectivity themselves.

The FCC should make clear that better targeting does not, by itself, justify a subsidy. Even a targeted subsidy can impose costs that exceed its benefits once the agency accounts for deadweight loss—the economic value lost when the surcharge discourages communications use. Support is warranted only where connectivity gains for schools that would otherwise go without affordable service exceed that loss. No one has demonstrated that balance across the program. Each funding year, the FCC should bear the burden of justifying support; ratepayers should not have to keep funding connections that districts would purchase anyway. Nor would invoking better educational outcomes materially change the analysis in this proceeding: Research finds that E-Rate largely does not improve those outcomes.

These reforms matter because mandatory contributions from telecommunications providers finance USF, and providers pass those costs to customers through line-item surcharges.[11] The contribution factor—the rate used to calculate providers’ payments—functions as one of the largest hidden taxes on American telecommunications consumers. Its burden is also regressive, falling more heavily on consumers with less ability to pay.[12]

These surcharges tax users regardless of their ability to pay and impose economic costs beyond the revenue they collect. Each increase in an already high contribution factor destroys proportionally more value by discouraging communications use.[13] Reducing E-Rate spending where recipients no longer need it to maintain access would directly ease that burden. A smaller, better-targeted program would lower consumers’ bills, reduce distortions in communications markets, and relieve pressure to tax broadband itself to sustain a fund whose obligations have outgrown its contribution base.

The FCC cannot, however, eliminate E-Rate entirely. The program remains an important means of connecting students to modern communications and learning tools, and Section 254 expressly requires support for schools and libraries. That requirement does not oblige the FCC to preserve E-Rate’s current scope. Instead, the agency must follow the statute’s limits, rather than allow the program’s history to dictate its size.

The Supreme Court upheld USF’s structure because § 254 limits the FCC to funding essential, affordable, and widely used services for the recipients Congress designated, including schools and libraries.[14] Courts no longer broadly defer to agency interpretations, and the statute’s use of “shall” does not leave the FCC free to withhold the required support. Ending E-Rate entirely would require congressional action. This proceeding should therefore focus on narrowing the program.

III. Screen-Time Limits Exceed CIPA’s Scope and Lack Evidentiary Support

The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) authorizes targeted content restrictions, not general limits on internet use. The FCC should not extend those conditions beyond Congress’ directive. Even if the agency had that authority, the evidence does not establish that screen-time limits on E-Rate-funded networks would improve learning or protect students. Such limits would impose costs on schools and libraries, restrict instructional technology, and burden students who depend on school connectivity.

A. CIPA Authorizes Content Filters, Not Screen-Time Limits

The NPRM asks whether CIPA gives the FCC authority to restrict internet access.[15] CIPA allows the agency to impose certain conditions on schools and libraries that receive E-Rate support. It requires them, for example, to adopt policies that prevent minors from accessing obscene material and material harmful to minors.[16] But that authority concerns specific categories of speech unprotected as to minors, not internet use generally.

CIPA regulates the content minors may access, not how long they may spend online. Its filtering requirements turn on defined content categories. A covered school or library must certify that it enforces a “technology protection measure” that blocks access to visual depictions that are obscene, constitute child pornography, or, for minors, are “harmful to minors.”[17] The statute defines a “technology protection measure” as technology that blocks or filters access to the specified material, rather than the internet generally.[18] “Harmful to minors” covers only visual depictions that appeal to a prurient interest, depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.[19] These provisions identify content that schools must block; they do not authorize the FCC to regulate the time, frequency, or volume of internet use.

The Supreme Court upheld CIPA in United States v. American Library Association in part because Congress identified specific categories of content that public funds should not support in schools and libraries.[20] The Court treated the law as a targeted funding condition that limited access to unprotected or harmful images. It also relied on the ease of disabling filters for adults to address concerns about the law’s breadth.[21]

Congress has broad latitude to attach conditions to federal assistance, but it may not “induce” recipients to engage in unconstitutional conduct, including violations of students’ First Amendment rights.[22] Extending CIPA’s restrictions to all constitutionally protected content—even through a limit on how long minors may access it—would raise serious First Amendment concerns.[23]

The NPRM’s proposed internet safety policy requirements would go beyond the targeted speech restrictions the Court upheld. Section 254(l) requires those policies to address minors’ access to “inappropriate matter.”[24] “Matter” refers to content that could harm students. A screen-time limit would restrict access to a much broader range of content, regardless of whether it poses that harm.

The NPRM also suggests that “unauthorized access” could include exceeding a prescribed number of hours online.[25] That reading ignores the statutory context. Congress paired “unauthorized access” with “hacking” and “other unlawful activities,” placing it alongside computer intrusions and illegal conduct, rather than ordinary use of a school network beyond a time limit.

The Supreme Court rejected a similar reading in Van Buren v. United States. It held that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act’s phrase “exceeds authorized access” concerns whether a user may enter a system or a particular area within it, rather than whether the user misuses access already available to them.[26] Reading CIPA’s “unauthorized access” language to cover otherwise permitted use would turn an anti-hacking provision into a general usage cap that Congress never enacted.

Congress also expressly reserved decisions about inappropriate content to local authorities. Section 254(l)(2) assigns those decisions to the local school board, educational agency, library, or other responsible authority. It bars federal agencies from establishing criteria for those decisions, reviewing them, or considering the criteria when administering E-Rate. A federally prescribed screen-time limit would bypass that directive by allowing the FCC to decide what harms minors and impose restrictions on that basis.

B. The Evidence Does Not Support Federal Screen-Time Limits

Even if CIPA authorizes the FCC to condition E-Rate funding on screen-time restrictions, the evidence that those restrictions protect students or improve educational outcomes is weak. The NPRM assumes that reducing children’s time on school-owned screens and networks would improve learning and protect them from harms such as bullying.[27] The research does not establish that premise.

Several recent research reviews, including ICLE’s, find that digital technology use typically explains less than 1% of the variation in adolescent well-being.[28] A 2025 meta-analysis combining results from 46 studies found an association of 0.061, below the 0.10 threshold researchers generally consider the minimum of evidentiary interest.[29] A Cambridge review of 143 studies covering nearly 1.1 million adolescents found that social media use accounts for roughly 1.4% of the variation in anxiety and depression.[30]

Even these small associations may overstate technology’s effects. Self-reported screen time correlates weakly with logged use, and adolescents who already struggle often turn to their devices more. That can produce a positive correlation between device use and distress without showing that the devices caused it.

For educational outcomes, school phone restrictions offer the strongest available evidence. They are the only device-use policies that multiple rigorous studies have evaluated across different periods and jurisdictions. Their effects on achievement are modest and inconsistent:

• Louis-Philippe Beland and Richard Murphy found modest test-score gains in schools that banned classroom phone use, with larger gains among lower-achieving students.[31]
• David Figlio and Umut Özek found small test-score improvements in Florida.[32]
• Sara Abrahamsson found that middle-school girls’ grade-point averages in Norway rose by 0.08 standard deviations after two years, but found no significant effects for boys or from less restrictive policies.[33]
• Victoria A. Goodyear et al. found no difference in academic attainment or disruptive classroom behavior between schools that restricted daytime phone use and those that permitted it.[34]

A 2024 literature review also found stronger evidence of benefits to social well-being than to academic performance.[35] At most, phone restrictions may produce small academic gains in some settings and none in others.

Those studies also evaluate a different intervention from the one the NPRM proposes. Removing students’ personal phones from classrooms addresses a distraction that competes with instruction. A screen-time limit on E-Rate-funded networks would instead restrict school-managed, filtered, and largely instructional technology use while leaving personal phones untouched. Nothing in the phone-restriction literature shows that capping instructional technology use improves achievement, and evidence on mandatory time limits points in the opposite direction.

Moreover, students with phones and cellular data could simply leave the E-Rate-funded network. The rule would restrict supervised, filtered access while pushing use onto unfiltered connections. Students who depend on school connectivity because they lack alternatives would bear the greatest burden.

The evidence likewise does not support screen-time mandates as an anti-bullying measure. The NPRM cites Abrahamsson’s finding that smartphone bans in middle schools reduce bullying.[36] But that study concerns personal phones—a policy schools and states are already adopting. A federal limit on E-Rate network use would add nothing to those policies and would not reach phones using cellular service. Restricting access for students without cellular service could instead increase social exclusion.

ICLE’s review also found that evidence linking device use to harm through bullying and social exclusion is generally weak and often contradictory.[37] Bullying is a behavioral problem. Limiting minutes online does not address the associated offline behaviors.[38]

Schools already have better tools to address these concerns. CIPA requires them to educate students about appropriate online behavior, including cyberbullying awareness and response. These initiatives address bullying’s causes and effects while preparing students to navigate online spaces inside and outside the classroom. Research also suggests that programs teaching adolescents healthy technology-use strategies improve long-term well-being more effectively than outright restrictions.[39]

Screen-time restrictions would impose real costs: compliance burdens on schools and libraries, displacement of instructional technology, and harm to students who rely on school networks. The FCC should not adopt restrictions whose costs outweigh their limited benefits.

Schools nationwide are already experimenting with phone restrictions and adjusting instructional technology use in response to parents, teachers, and independent research. That includes findings, noted in the NPRM, that writing on paper offers advantages over using digital devices.[40] Local authorities can tailor these choices to districts, schools, and individual students, then revise them as evidence develops. The FCC should allow that process to continue rather than impose a uniform rule the evidence does not support.

IV. Conclusion

E-Rate has expanded connectivity for schools and libraries, including for people who lack internet access at home. The FCC should preserve those gains while targeting support to institutions that need it to maintain affordable access. Congress requires that support, but not the program’s current size. Reducing unnecessary subsidies would ease the burden on telecommunications consumers without sacrificing E-Rate’s statutory purpose.

The FCC should not condition that support on screen-time limits. CIPA authorizes targeted content restrictions, not general limits on internet use, and reserves decisions about inappropriate material to local authorities. Even if the FCC had broader authority, the evidence does not establish that limits on E-Rate-funded networks would improve learning or protect students. Such limits would impose compliance costs, displace instructional technology, and burden students who depend on school connectivity.

The FCC should focus on efficient funding and affordable access, while allowing schools and libraries to tailor technology policies to local needs and emerging evidence.

[1] Ensuring Children’s Safe Use of Screens and E-Rate Funded Services et al., WC Docket No. 26-133 et al., Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 26-41 (June 26, 2026), https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-26-41A1.pdf [hereinafter NPRM].

[2] See generally Reply Comments of the Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ., Reforming the High-Cost Program for an All-IP Future; Connect America Fund: A National Broadband Plan for Future High-Cost Universal Service Support, WC Docket Nos. 26-96 & 10-90 (Sept. 1, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/USF-High-Cost-Comments.pdf.

[3] 47 U.S.C. § 254(b)(6).

[4] Id. § 254(h)(2).

[5] News Release, Fed. Commc’ns Comm’n, FCC Launches Modernization of E-Rate Program (July 19, 2013), https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-322288A1.pdf.

[6] Modernizing the E-Rate Program for Schools and Libraries, WC Docket No. 13-184, Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 29 FCC Rcd. 8870, 8880–94, ¶¶ 22–62 (2014) [hereinafter 2014 First E-Rate Order].

[7] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 28.

[8] Several studies have found that E-Rate has little impact on student achievement. Goolsbee and Guryan found that E-Rate increased the number of connected classrooms by 66% but had no measurable effect on student achievement. Austan Goolsbee & Jonathan Guryan, The Impact of Internet Subsidies in Public Schools (Nat’l Bureau of Econ. Rsch., Working Paper No. 9090, 2002), https://ssrn.com/abstract=321356. Hazlett, Schwall, and Wallsten found that E-Rate spending had no measurable effect on SAT scores in North Carolina from 1999 through 2013. Thomas W. Hazlett, Benjamin Schwall & Scott Wallsten, The Educational Impact of Broadband Subsidies for Schools Under E-Rate (May 17, 2016) (unpublished manuscript), https://ssrn.com/abstract=2796048. Tecza, Wallsten, and Lee found, at most, a minuscule relationship between broadband subsidies and school performance. Jakub Tecza, Scott Wallsten & Yoojin Lee, Do Broadband Subsidies for Schools Improve Students’ Performance? Evidence from Florida (Tech. Pol’y Inst., May 2023), https://techpolicyinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/do-broadband-subsidies-for-schools-improve-students-performance.pdf.

 

[9] Wireline Competition Bureau Directs USAC to Fully Fund Eligible Category One and Category Two E-Rate Requests, CC Docket No. 02-6, Public Notice, 40 FCC Rcd. 3190 (2025).

[10] Id.

[11] See Comments of the Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ., Lifeline and Link Up Reform and Modernization et al., WC Docket No. 11-42 et al., at 3 (May 4, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Lifeline-Comments.pdf.

[12] Id.

[13] See Brian Albrecht, No, You Can’t Just Compare Tariff Rates and Income-Tax Rates, Truth on the Mkt. (Oct. 3, 2025), https://truthonthemarket.com/2025/10/03/no-you-cant-compare-tariff-rates-and-income-tax-rates.

[14] FCC v. Consumers’ Rsch., 606 U.S. 656 (2025).

[15] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 29.

[16] 47 U.S.C. § 254(h)(5)(B).

[17] Id.

[18] 47 U.S.C. § 254(h)(7).

[19] Id.

[20] See United States v. Am. Libr. Ass’n, 539 U.S. 194 (2003).

[21] Id. at 211–13.

[22] Id. at 214.

[23] See NetChoice v. Jones, 822 F. Supp. 3d 656 (E.D. Va. 2026) (finding that Virginia’s one-hour daily limit on social media use likely violated the First Amendment). Content-based restrictions aimed at protecting minors receive intermediate scrutiny only when they target speech unprotected as to minors. See Free Speech Coal. v. Paxton, 606 U.S. 461, 492 (2025).

[24] 47 U.S.C. § 254(l).

[25] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 38.

[26] Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021).

[27] NPRM, supra note 1, ¶ 5.

[28] Lura Forcum, Julian Morris & Ben Sperry, The Forbidden Feed: Adolescent Well-Being and the Limits of Social-Media Regulation 14 (Int’l Ctr. for Law & Econ., Sept. 15, 2026), https://laweconcenter.org/resources/the-forbidden-feed-adolescent-well-being-and-the-limits-of-social-media-regulation.

[29] Id at 9.

[30] Id.

[31] Louis-Philippe Beland & Richard Murphy, Ill Communication: Technology, Distraction & Student Performance, 41 Labour Econ. 61 (2016).

[32] David Figlio & Umut Özek, The Impact of Cellphone Bans in Schools on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida (Annenberg Inst., EdWorkingPaper No. 25-1315, 2025), https://doi.org/10.26300/9y5r-yx11.

[33] Sara Abrahamsson, Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health (Norwegian Sch. of Econ., Discussion Paper Series in Econ. No. 1/2024, 2024), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4735240.

[34] Victoria A. Goodyear et al., School Phone Policies and Their Association with Mental Wellbeing, Phone Use, and Social Media Use (SMART Schools): A Cross-Sectional Observational Study, 51 Lancet Reg’l Health Eur. 101211 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2025.101211.

[35] Forcum et al., supra note 28, at 21.

[36] NPRM, supra note 1, at 52; Abrahamsson, supra note 33.

[37] Forcum et al., supra note 28, at 11–13.

[38] Id.

[39] Id. at 39–40.

[40] NPRM, supra note 1, at 52.

Suppose you get a $1,000 payment. How much do you spend? Before answering, we’d want to know a few things: Is this a one-time payment? The first of many? Can you borrow? Do you already have savings?

This year’s Nobel Prize in economics went to Robert Hall and Michael Woodford for providing the theory to make these questions concrete, the empirical work to test the theories, and an explanation of how both optimal and realistic policy differ depending on the answers.

When co-authors win the Nobel Prize, as in 2024, it’s pretty simple to see why they’re paired together. It makes a lot of sense.

This one takes a little more squinting. Woodford is a perennial favorite to win, and Hall is one of the great economists of all time, but he’s less often mentioned in Nobel discussions.

The Nobel Committee found a way to tie them together for “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization”—how households’ and firms’ decisions inform policies to smooth the economy’s ups and downs. I’d say it’s “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics,” or how those individual decisions shape the broader economy. But my guess is that this doesn’t sound important enough, so they wanted a “why does this matter?” hook. They went with “stabilization,” which immediately connects to policy.

This is a great macroeconomics prize. It’s partially a New Keynesian prize. New Keynesian economics describes how slow adjustments in prices and wages can give policy a role in stabilizing the economy. Woodford is basically synonymous with it, although Hall is less often described that way. As we’ll see, Hall’s equations and empirical approach became an essential part of the New Keynesian model.

I’ll go through some of Hall’s contributions: those directly connected to the prize, but also some the committee left out that I think are equally important and interesting. Then I’ll talk about how those contributions laid the foundation for Woodford’s work, which has been central to macroeconomics for more than 20 years.

Read the full piece here.

Apple’s new business terms for apps in the European Union took effect on October 1, 2026. A developer that sends a user out of its app to buy something on its own website now pays Apple 15% of any sale concluded within seven days of the tap, and 5% of sales made in apps distributed outside the App Store. The Digital Markets Act, in Article 5(4), says that a gatekeeper “shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers” to their users “and to conclude contracts with those end users”. Seventeen months earlier the Commission had fined Apple EUR 500 million for restricting steering and charging a commission on the sales that followed. In August 2026, a Commission spokesperson said the Commission welcomed the new terms. Apple describes its commissions as reflecting “the extensive value Apple provides developers”. Epic Games, in press reports, calls them junk fees. This piece takes no side in that dispute, and no position on whether gratuity is a good regulatory instrument. It measures what the texts say.

Marcel Mauss, the French sociologist, published an essay on the gift in 1925. He had read the ethnographies of the Pacific and the American Northwest and found the same pattern in each. A gift is presented as free and voluntary, and it is neither. It obliges the receiver to accept and to return, and the return is where the value changes hands. Mary Douglas, introducing the English edition in 1990, put the finding in three words, no free gifts.

EU digital law is full of gifts. I wanted to know what they oblige. So I coded every provision in the 34 binding instruments of the EU digital rulebook that fixes what a regulated party may charge a beneficiary for data, access, a service, a switch or a procedure, 244 pricing rules in all. Two thirds of them, 161, set the price at zero.

Read the full piece here.