Determining Causality in Telecommunications

[Commentary] With the Federal Communications Commission and most government actors obsessed with incentive creation, it makes sense to determine whether and how a regulatory or deregulatory action causes some desired outcome. Consider the creation of incentives to invest in physical plant. Incumbent carriers have spent a lot of time, money and effort arguing that regulation creates investment disincentives and deregulation does the desired opposite. This simplistic and not always correct premise constitutes the prevailing wisdom in the US. Using this mindset, sponsored researchers have argued that next generation network plant skyrocketed soon after the FCC abandoned local loop unbundling and other "sharing" requirements. Let's probe this assertion.