Tomorrow the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is testifying at a House Energy and Commerce Committee oversight hearing on spectrum auctions. The hearing is focused on the implementation of the broadcast incentive auction required by the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (“Spectrum Act”), though the members will likely address other issues as well, including mobile spectrum aggregation.
I expect several questions regarding the FCC’s commitment to comply with the legislation as enacted by Congress. FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai has questioned whether several of the agency’s proposals in its auction proceeding are consistent with the Spectrum Act. The FCC’s recent proceeding to consider mobile spectrum aggregation has since raised troubling new questions regarding the agency’s willingness to comply with Congressional directives regarding spectrum auctions. If the FCC adopts new limits on spectrum holdings as suggested by its mobile competition reports, Verizon and AT&T would be prohibited from bidding in the incentive auction. Contrary to Congressional intent, the incentive auction would be rigged before it even begins. Continue reading →
Rather than invest and deploy new networks offering millions of consumers with additional choices for high speed Internet access, CLECs are investing in the regulatory process in hopes the FCC will save them from the inconvenience and expense of transitioning to all-IP infrastructure. The FCC should not allow the self-interest of CLECs to stand in the way of the IP-transition or the delivery of high speed Internet services to millions of residential consumers who demand more choice.
Shortly after AT&T announced “Project Velocity IP,” its plan to invest an additional $14 billion to provide high-speed Internet access to 99 percent of customer locations in its wireline service area, I blogged about the broad consensus among policymakers, pundits, and industry players in support of the announcement. But, “you can never please all of the people all of the time.” Now that the initial buzz around the announcement has abated, the inevitably unpleased few have gone on the offensive.
The few who cannot be pleased by Internet transformation are “competitive local exchange carriers,” also known as “CLECs.” These companies were created in the mid-1990s to provide both residential and business consumers with an additional choice for telephone service, but after the dot-com bubble burst, CLECs chose to limit their offerings to more lucrative business customers in downtown metro areas. They typically do not offer service to residential consumers or businesses that demand additional options in more suburban and rural areas.
While companies that serve all types of American consumers are investing in the transformation of their outdated telephone systems into the all-Internet protocol (IP) infrastructure of the 21st Century to deliver high-speed Internet services to residential consumers, CLECs claim the IP-transition is a “waste of resources” and a “distraction.” Rather than invest and deploy new networks offering millions of consumers with additional choices for high speed Internet access, CLECs are investing in the regulatory process in hopes the FCC will save them from the inconvenience and expense of transitioning to all-IP infrastructure. The FCC should not allow the self-interest of CLECs to stand in the way of the IP-transition or the delivery of high-speed Internet services to millions of residential consumers who demand more choice. Continue reading →
“All this top-40s music sounds the same.” I think we’ve all heard this sentiment. The nature of regional radio broadcasting almost requires a regression to the mean in musical tastes. A radio station cannot be all things to all people. I suspect most people will be surprised to learn that some of the most innovative radio broadcasts are taking place at hundreds of stations across the country—and only few people can listen to them. These stations, known as low power FM (LPFM), carry niche programming like independent folk rock music, fishing shows, political news, reggae, blues, and religious programming. (And one station in Sitka, Alaska consists entirely of a live feed of whale sounds.) Continue reading →
[UPDATE 4/30/13: This article was subsequently published in Volume 65, Issues 2 of the Federal Communications Law Journal in April 2013. The links below now point to the final FCLJ version.]
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released a new paper by Brent Skorup and me entitled, “Uncreative Destruction: The War on Vertical Integration in the Information Economy.” Brent, who is the research director for the Information Economy Project at the George Mason University School of Law, and I have been working on this paper since the Spring and we are looking forward to getting it published in a law review shortly. The paper focuses on Tim Wu’s “separations principle” for the digital economy, something I’ve spent some time critiquing here in the past. Here’s the introduction from the 44-page paper that Brent and I just released:
Are information sectors sufficiently different from other sectors of the economy such that more stringent antitrust standards should be applied to them preemptively? Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu responds in the affirmative in his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Having successfully pushed net-neutrality regulation into the policy spotlight, Wu has turned his attention to what he regards as excessive market concentration and threats to free speech throughout the entire information economy.To support his call for increased antitrust intervention, Wu explains his view of competition in the information economy—a view that deviates substantially from current mainstream antitrust theory.
Continue reading →
Vinton Cerf, one of the “fathers of the internet,” discusses what he sees as one of the greatest threats to the internet—the encroachment of the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union (ITU) into the internet realm. ITU member states will meet this December in Dubai to update international telecommunications regulations and consider proposals to regulate the net. Cerf argues that, as the face of telecommunications is changing, the ITU is attempting to justify its continued existence by expanding its mandate to include the internet. Cerf says that the business model of the internet is fundamentally different from that of traditional telecommunications, and as a result, the ITU’s regulatory model will not work. In place of top-down ITU regulation, Cerf suggests that open multi-stakeholder processes and bilateral agreements may be a better solutions to the challenges of governance on the internet.
In my last post, I discussed an outstanding new paper from Ronald Cass on “Antitrust for High-Tech and Low: Regulation, Innovation, and Risk.” As I noted, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read about the relationship between antitrust regulation and the modern information economy. That got me thinking about what other papers on this topic that I might recommend to others. So, for what it’s worth, here are the 12 papers that have most influenced my own thinking on the issue. (If you have other suggestions for what belongs on the list, let me know. No reason to keep it limited to just 12.)
Stan J. Liebowitz & Stephen E. Margolis,”Path Dependence, Lock-in, and History,” 11(1) Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, (April 1995): 205-26.
Yesterday POLITICO Pro said both political parties are on the verge of declaring support for some version of Internet freedom in their 2012 platforms. The Democratic platform contained a lengthy statement in 2008, but according to Politico, its 2012 platform will consist of a simple sentence about protecting the open Internet. Politico also noted that, though Republicans hardly mentioned the Internet in 2008, they are expected to consider several Internet proposals during their platform meeting early next week. Will the new Republican platform address Internet freedom? If so, what is the platform likely to say? Continue reading →
Is competition really a problem in the tech industry? That was the question the folks over at WebProNews asked me to come on their show and discuss this week. I offer my thoughts in the following 15-minute clip. Also, down below I have embedded a few of my recent relevant essays on this topic, a few of which I mentioned during the show.
Anyway, all the entries in the symposium are in and a few rebuttals have followed, including one by me. In my response, I took on Frank Pasquale and Eric Clemons, who were the most aggressive in their calls for search regulation. I thought I would just re-post it here to complement my early entry in the symposium on Monday.
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I enjoyed the entries in this symposium and learned something from each of them. I have a few things to say in response to both Frank Pasquale and Eric Clemons and their sweeping indictments of not just Google but seemingly the entire modern information economy.
Everywhere they look, it seems, Pasquale and Clemons see villainy. Someone completely alien to the modern online ecosystem would read Pasquale’s description of it — “digital feudalism,” “absolute sovereignty,” “opaque technologies,” “leaving users in the dark,”
etc., etc. — and likely conclude that a catastrophe had befallen modern man. Of course, Pasquale’s narrative is missing any reference to the unparalleled expansion in the stock of knowledge and human choices that has been made possible by Google and the others companies he castigates (Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon). Meanwhile, Clemons wants to group Google in with supposed Wall Street robber barons as well as characters from Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” It’s all a bit much. Continue reading →
The fine folks at George Mason University School of Law’s Henry G. Manne Program in Law & Economics Studies have put together another stellar agenda and lineup of speakers for their Second Annual Conference on Competition, Search & Social Media. The event will be held at GMU’s School of Law on Wednesday, May 16th from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Panel topics are listed as follows:
PANEL 1:
Antitrust and Platform Competition in Search and Social Media (This panel will discuss issues involving market definition, network effects, and dynamic considerations when analyzing search and social media platform competition.)
PANEL 2:
Search, Duties to Deal, and Essential Facilities (This panel will explore the extent to which search engines should be viewed as utilities, and whether they may have a legal duty to assist their rivals under the essential facilities doctrine as it survives after Trinko and Linkline.)
PANEL 3:
The Interface Between Privacy and Competitive Analysis in Search and Social Media (This panel will explore the extent to which privacy should be germane to antitrust analysis of online search and social networks, including whether privacy can be viewed as a dimension of quality and the extent to which privacy regulation may affect competition.)
PANEL 4:
Are There Workable Remedies for “Search Engine Bias”? (This panel will discuss economic, legal (including First Amendment), and practical issues surrounding potential remedies to allegedly “biased” search engine results.)
Seriously, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better set of speakers on these topics. Check them all out here, where you can also RSVP if you’re interested.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.