February 2017

[Commentary] If affordable and abundant broadband is integral to the continued growth of the American economy , then how the market reacts to Trump administration policy will determine whether the country can deliver this necessary infrastructure. Here are the four major areas where I expect the Trump administration to impact broadband policy and my predictions for how those reforms may look:

Expect a change in how the government considers the competitive landscape
Expect a change in the range of government oversight
Expect a change in the center of gravity from the FCC to Congress
Expect an increase in mergers and a change in merger reviews

(This is the second of three blogs discussing the state of broadband policy as a new administration and Congress begin.)

While Democratic Sens were suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet order is fine as is and nothing is needed to be done to alter those protections—either legislatively and certainly not a rollback by the FCC—a legislative solution to resolve the issue was getting a lot of votes from outside groups Tuesday. That came after Sens Ed Markey (D-MA), Al Franken (D-MN) and others held a press conference to say they would fight any attempts by the FCC to reverse the Open Internet order or legislative attempts in a Republican-controlled Congress to weaken it.

In a joint press statement, The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, the National Urban League and others called for "a permanent statutory solution that enshrines the basic open internet principles into law. These core principles are not controversial and should not be subject to endless litigation, regulation, and reconsideration. A statute locking in net neutrality would protect net neutrality no matter how the political winds blow."

[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.]