Digital Platforms Aren’t Telecoms and Their Regulations Shouldn’t Rhyme
Modern tech markets share several key economic characteristics with the telecommunications markets of the recent past, a new working paper from Georgetown Law’s Jonathan Nuechterlein and Howard Shelanski argues. And while telecom regulators have over the years sought to address these key issues of network effects, economies of scale, and switching costs through various interventions, the paper notes that not all of these approaches were successful.
As former officials at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission (Nuechterlein served as the FTC’s general counsel and as deputy general counsel for the FCC, while Shelanski was the FCC’s chief economist and director of the FTC’s Bureau of Economics), the pair thoughtfully examine how past regulatory experiences in telecom might inform today’s debates about regulating digital platforms. The working paper suggests that policymakers should carefully weigh the costs and benefits of similar interventions in tech markets, recognizing both the parallels and the differences between these sectors.