Six years ago, the Phoenix Center released (and later published) a paper entitled Network Neutrality and Foreclosing Market Exchange: A Transaction Cost Analysis. In that paper, we analyzed the effects of network neutrality proposals that foreclose or severely limit market transactions between content providers and broadband service providers. Our model revealed that under plausible conditions, rules that prohibit efficient commercial transactions between content and broadband service providers could, in fact, be bad for all participants: consumers would pay higher prices, the profits of the broadband service provider would decline, and the sales of Internet content providers would also decline. As a result, such proposals would …
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FCC Rules Block Broadband Price Cuts…
May 13th, 2013 | Posted by in Federal Communications Commission | Law and Economics | Net Neutrality | Regulation | Wireless - (0 Comments)The Sixteenth CMRS Competition Report: A Paralysis Born in Humility
March 25th, 2013 | Posted by in Broadband | CMRS Reports | Federal Communications Commission | Law and Economics | Mobile Broadband | Regulation | Spectrum | Wireless - (3 Comments)Each year, Section 331(c)(1)(C) of the Communications Act directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “review competitive market conditions with respect to commercial mobile services and shall include in its annual report an analysis of those conditions.” To this end, the agency released its Sixteenth Annual CMRS Report last week. In this latest report, the FCC makes few formal findings, but instead “focuses on presenting the best data available on competition throughout this sector of the economy and highlighting several key trends in the mobile wireless industry.” (Sixteenth Report at ¶ 2.) Consistent with the other CMRS Reports issued under Chairman Julius Genachowski’s watch, the …
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Copyright and Wireless Carterfone (Part Deux)…
March 7th, 2013 | Posted by in Copyright | Federal Communications Commission | Handset Exclusivity | Industry Structure and Market Performance | Intellectual Property | Interoperability | Law and Economics | Mobile Broadband | Wireless - (Comments Off)Last month, I authored a blog discussing the Librarian of Congress’s recent decision not to exempt handset unlocking of new phones from the anti-circumvention petitions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). Since that blog was posted, copyright-reform activists launched an on-line campaign to have the White House “ask the Librarian of Congress to rescind this decision, and failing that, champion a bill that makes unlocking permanently legal.” Last week, in a post by R. David Edelman, Senior Advisor for Internet, Innovation Policy, entitled It’s Time to Legalize Cell Phone Unlocking, the White House joined in the dispute stating: The White House agrees … that …
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The FCC Contradicts Their Facts (Again) To Justify Expanded Broadband Regulation…
February 20th, 2013 | Posted by in Federal Communications Commission | IP Transition | Law and Economics | National Broadband Plan | Net Neutrality | Regulation | Section 706 - (1 Comments)Last year, we released a paper entitled Justifying the Ends: Section 706 and the Regulation of Broadband (and forthcoming, Journal of Internet Law) where we demonstrated how the Federal Communications Commission deliberately ignored its own evidence to support expanded regulatory jurisdiction over IP-based services. With the release of its new Measuring Broadband America Report last week, the FCC once again undermines its factual predicate for Internet regulation. Let me explain. Over the last several years, we have seen the Federal Communications Commission put forth a rather clever argument to expand its regulatory authority over broadband services. Under Section 706(a) of the Communications Act, the Commission …
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Copyright and Wireless Carterfone…
February 7th, 2013 | Posted by in Copyright | Handset Exclusivity | Intellectual Property | Interoperability | Law and Economics | Mobile Broadband | Wireless - (Comments Off)Recently, a renewed interest in long-term contracts and the practice of locking handsets to networks has emerged from an unlikely source: Copyright law. Making a very long and complicated story short, under Section 1201(a)(1)(A) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it is unlawful to circumvent certain technological measures employed by or on behalf of copyright owners to protect their works. That said, copyright law always embeds some balance between owner and user, and Section 1201(a)(1)(B) limits the prohibition for subsection (A) by exempting those persons who are “adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular …
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Sloppy Research Sinks Susan Crawford’s Book…
January 18th, 2013 | Posted by in Broadband | Cable | Federal Communications Commission | Industry Structure and Market Performance | Investment | Law and Economics | National Broadband Plan | Regulation | Spectrum | Spectrum Exhaust | Susan Crawford - (3 Comments)This month, Cardozo Law School Professor and former Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy to President Barack Obama Susan Crawford released her new book entitled Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Professor Crawford is known as a tireless and vocal advocate for government intervention in and the regulation of telecommunications, and is perhaps the most recognized advocate for the construction of a government-funded and regulated fiber-optic Internet network servicing all American homes and businesses. Many vigorously oppose Professor Crawford’s ideas by claiming they are overly regulatory and too expensive, but many support her proposals with equal …
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Is it Time to End Asymmetric Regulation?
December 19th, 2012 | Posted by in Federal Communications Commission | IP Transition | Law and Economics | Regulation | Regulatory Reform - (Comments Off)This week, USTelecom filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission requesting the agency to issue a declaratory ruling that incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) are no longer subject to dominant carrier regulation when providing interstate mass market and enterprise switched access services. As the Commission begins to evaluate USTelecom’s petition, we need to keep in mind that the policy question at the heart of this proceeding is not necessarily one of de-regulation per se (although deregulation is the end objective of USTelecom’s petition), but one of regulatory symmetry. That is, does it make sense to maintain asymmetric regulation for one select segment of the …
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When the CLECs Jumped the Shark…
December 10th, 2012 | Posted by in Federal Communications Commission | Industry Structure and Market Performance | IP Transition | Law and Economics | National Broadband Plan | Regulation | Regulatory Reform - (Comments Off)Last month, I authored a blog entitled It’s Time to Start the Conversation on the IP Transition where I argued that we could no longer postpone the development of a cohesive regulatory paradigm to manage the complicated issue of facilitating the transition from legacy TDM networks to the more efficient IP-based networks. This view is shared by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai,who has long-proposed the creation of an “IP Transition Taskforce.” And now, the chorus of supporters widens to include FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who announced today that the FCC intends to form an agency-wide “Technology Transitions Policy Task Force” that will “coordinate the Commission’s efforts …
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Economic Theory in Action: The FCC’s Assault on the Mobile Broadband Consumer…
November 30th, 2012 | Posted by in "Over the Top" Services | Broadband | Federal Communications Commission | Industry Structure and Market Performance | Law and Economics | MVPDs | Net Neutrality | Network Agnostic Devices | Regulation | Wireless - (Comments Off)Recently, I spotted an interesting blog by Scott Wallsten at the Technology Policy Institute. In this blog, Scott discusses the FCC’s recent decision that Verizon violated the open access rules of the 700 MHz C-Block auction by charging its customers an additional $20 per month on its data plans to tether a device. In response, Verizon paid a fine and now allows tethering on all new data plans. However, Scott observes that: Verizon effectively abandoned the post-paid market for light users after the FCC decision. Verizon no longer offers individual plans. Even consumers with only a single smartphone must purchase a shared data plan. That’s …
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Professor Susan Crawford and the Looming “Cable Monopoly”…
November 16th, 2012 | Posted by in "Over the Top" Services | AllVid | Broadband | Broadband Credibility Gap | Cable | CableCard | Federal Communications Commission | Industry Structure and Market Performance | Investment | IP Transition | Law and Economics | MVPDs | National Broadband Plan | Net Neutrality | Regulation | Susan Crawford - (Comments Off)Next month, a new book entitled Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age (Yale University Press 2012) from Cardozo Law School Professor Susan Crawford will hit the bookshelves. According to her publisher’s blurb, Professor Crawford’s book will examine how the United States has “created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago.” But what is this “monopoly” to which Professor Crawford refers? While the publisher’s promotional blurb is silent on this question, according to a 2010 paper authored by Professor Crawford in the Yale Law and Policy Review, it appears that she is talking about …
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