Jeffrey Eisenach

[Commentary] As Wired magazine put it, Oct 21’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Domain Name System provider Dyn was “a definite reminder of the fragility of the web, and the power of the forces that aim to disrupt it.” The fact that we haven’t experienced a serious kinetic-effects attack does not mean one is not coming or that we are prepared for it if it does. As National Security Agency's Curt Dukes noted, not one of the attacks in the past 24 months (OPM, the Democratic National Convention hacks, and so forth) has involved use of a “zero day” exploit — the most potent and unpredictable kind of cyberattack, because it involves a software vulnerability that has not yet been discovered or used. They have all been carried out using more mundane, well-understood vulnerabilities.

What would it mean to take cyber power more seriously? Earlier this year, AEI published a report on An American Strategy for Cyberspace, which I coauthored with other AEI scholars. Our recommendations included being more willing to retaliate against cyberattacks when they occur, loosening the reins on government’s use of active defense, and if the stakes merit it, even taking preemptive action. Whatever the details of the solution, the time has come to realize that cybersecurity is no longer just about embarrassing e-mails and lost credit card numbers. In today’s world, cyber power has the capacity to cripple infrastructures, disrupt economies, enable deadly terrorist attacks, and profoundly threaten America’s national security. We ought to be taking it more seriously than we are.

[Commentary] While interconnection mandates may appear at first blush to be costless, they are not. Rather, as with virtually every other economic institution or arrangement, interconnection has costs as well as benefits.

Such costs may take the form of reduced incentives for network owners to invest in their networks, the loss of specialization that accompanies forced standardization, or various other forms. That is why interconnection and interoperability are not ubiquitous.

In the Internet environment, the value of interconnection is very high -- which is why IP interconnection has been both ubiquitous and voluntary from the Internet’s inception -- but that does not mean that interconnection is always the right answer. The question for policymakers is whether the task of balancing the benefits of interconnection against the costs should as a general matter be made by administrative process, or by the marketplace.

[Commentary] There are strong arguments in favor of allowing the third largest US wireless carrier, Sprint, to acquire the fourth, T-Mobile, but Sprint Chairman (and Softbank CEO) Masayoshi Son's assertion that current performance of the US mobile market is "terrible" isn't among them.

Perhaps he should visit more often -- or try using a different provider. The reality is that the US mobile broadband market is one of the most competitive, and best performing, in the world. More than 90 percent of US households have coverage from next generation LTE wireless networks, which are now being deployed by all the major US carriers, including Sprint and T-Mobile. That puts the US in a virtual tie with Japan and South Korea for the most widely available mobile broadband coverage in the world. The US is also tied with Japan for the highest LTE penetration, with 20 percent of subscribers using LTE connections. Only South Korea, at 46 percent, has more.

International pricing comparisons for mobile broadband services are notoriously difficult, thanks to variations in business models (some countries rely more heavily on handset subsidies than others) and usage (Americans use twice as much mobile data as Europeans). But according to the OECD, which surveys prices for a variety of different bundles and service, US prices are lower than those in Japan for nearly every basket, and lower on average by 35 percent.

[Eisenach is director of the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Internet, Telecommunications, and Technology Policy]

[March 11]

[Commentary] There are strong arguments in favor of allowing the third largest US wireless carrier, Sprint, to acquire the fourth, T-Mobile, but Sprint Chairman (and Softbank CEO) Masayoshi Son's assertion that current performance of the US mobile market is "terrible" isn't among them.

Perhaps he should visit more often -- or try using a different provider. The reality is that the US mobile broadband market is one of the most competitive, and best performing, in the world. More than 90 percent of US households have coverage from next generation LTE wireless networks, which are now being deployed by all the major US carriers, including Sprint and T-Mobile. That puts the US in a virtual tie with Japan and South Korea for the most widely available mobile broadband coverage in the world. The US is also tied with Japan for the highest LTE penetration, with 20 percent of subscribers using LTE connections. Only South Korea, at 46 percent, has more.

International pricing comparisons for mobile broadband services are notoriously difficult, thanks to variations in business models (some countries rely more heavily on handset subsidies than others) and usage (Americans use twice as much mobile data as Europeans). But according to the OECD, which surveys prices for a variety of different bundles and service, US prices are lower than those in Japan for nearly every basket, and lower on average by 35 percent.

[Eisenach is director of the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Internet, Telecommunications, and Technology Policy]

[March 11]

[Commentary] Australia has spent $7.3 billion on its highly touted National Broadband Network, but made fiber available to only about 260,000 premises, which works out to over $28,000 each.

Nearly a decade ago, it had a chance to take a different path. In 2005, Australian phone company Telstra would cover 87 percent of households on its own nickel, with the government pitching in $2.6 billion to extend the build out into rural areas. The catch: Australian regulators would agree to follow the US model of exempting next generation networks from network unbundling requirements, thus creating incentives for intermodal competition from cable and wireless. The answer: No sale. Australian bureaucrats and politicians decided instead to heed the cries of access seekers and follow the European approach of “encouraging competition” through massive regulatory intervention.