Will Rinehart

Net neutrality regulations have been dead for years, and they should stay that way. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission has moved to reopen and re-litigate the issue. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has initiated a new rule-making that would enact what are largely the same net neutrality rules tried back in 2016. The law has changed and markets have changed, and yet the arguments for and against net neutrality have largely remained the same.

[Commentary] Transmitting data through wireless networks is costly, as the agency has admitted countless times. Traditionally, costs have been recovered via consumer data plans. Content producers, on the other hand, haven’t had to bear the consequences of network upkeep. If however, edge providers were forced to bear some of these costs, then they would find themselves pressured to push for technological advances to economize on bandwidth. Economists call these costs externalities, and a long line of work suggests that they lead to inefficient markets. The report and the letters showed that the investigation rested on the belief that all content, whether it is zero-rated or not, conforms to an ideal of perfect competition. But, in the real world, there are search costs, barriers to entry exist, content has market power and there are significant transaction costs.

[Will Rinehart is Director of Technology and Innovation Policy at the American Action Forum.]

[Commentary] In the early days of the Federal Communications Commission, monopolies were encouraged, and the public interest mandate worked alongside that market structure. But, the public interest has also been hugely important in the era of competition sparked by the AT&T antitrust case and the 1996 Telecommunication Act. Vague notions of either the market structure or the public interest aren’t especially good guides for policy. Rather, policymakers and the commitariat should focus on concrete alternatives and actionable outcomes. While Jeff Spross might want to “smash the centralized behemoths,” effective regulation of Facebook and Google should begin with an outline of the world that would be achieved.

[Will Rinehart is the director of technology and innovation policy at the American Action Forum.]

[Commentary] In the software industry, programmers continuously revisit a program to clean it up, debug sections, and simplify the lines of code. We need to do the same for government. We need to debug the bureaucracy. Broadly, the next administration should:
Upgrade the executive branch;
Keep the Internet free and open by refreshing the Federal Communications Commission;
Help cut the red tape in broadband deployment;
Reform the Universal Service Fund;
Free up the spectrum market;
Troubleshoot the tax and regulatory system;
Support entrepreneurship and reform R&D spending; and
Educate the next generation of STEM workers.
No one single change will do all of the heavy lifting, nor is this an exhaustive list, but together these policies would help reboot the government and allow the next generation of workers, consumers, and companies to succeed in the quickly advancing economy.

[Will Rinehart is the director of technology and innovation policy at the American Action Forum.]

Recent proposed mergers in the broadband space have brought attention to the competitive implications of these business deals.

Three broad observations should be kept in mind when evaluating broadband mergers and acquisitions:

1. Mergers and acquisitions can carry real gains for consumers by improving both the company and the dynamics of the relevant market;
2. The rapid development of the broadband industry demands a much higher threshold for evidence that should deter mergers; and
3. The broadband market is quickly evolving and as a result easily identified incumbents steadily face competitive pressures from countless new sources.

As past mergers show, mergers and acquisitions carry real gains for consumers by changing both the company and the dynamics of the market. Ultimately, a merged company will face more effective scrutiny from the market and consumers than from either the Department of Justice or the Federal Communications Commission. This is the essence of regulatory humility and indicative of the current market.