James Glassman

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission published its fourth annual report on measuring fixed broadband, and the results yet again speak to the healthy state of the sector and the benefits of light-touch regulation.

The last thing the country needs right now is for the FCC to regulate Internet Service Providers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, as if they were public utilities. Significantly, in the report, the FCC researchers found that DSL, an older technology deployed in a more heavily regulated environment, gives consumers less than what they are expecting -- while cable, fiber, and satellite goes above and beyond.

That consumers are trading up to higher speeds is further evidence that they are enthusiastic about having high-quality Internet service -- and trust the providers to give them exactly that. That is hardly a marketplace that’s crying out for a regulatory fix.

[Glassman is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute]

[Commentary] Susan Crawford is talking again, this time in a long interview with Ezra Klein of Vox.

Klein pushes her more than most of her interlocutors, and, as a result, we see her arguments in all their naked glory. Crawford’s is not just a statist view of communications, but also a deeply pessimistic and nostalgic one. It must be. Otherwise, she would have to concede the success of a “private market… left to its own devices.”

Crawford selectively cites statistics that show US consumers getting poor service compared with Swedes, Slovenians, Singaporeans and the like. My colleagues Rosyln Layton and Bret Swanson dispose of such deceptive comparisons easily. For example, the current generation standard of 4G/LTE networks are available to 97% of Americans but just 26% of Europeans.

But where Crawford truly fails is her confusion between these selective inputs and America’s spectacular outputs. What the cable companies, the telecoms, and the satellites provide is an infrastructure, a platform. On top of that platform has been built a magnificent, rapidly changing edifice. Further, the Klein interview reveals Crawford’s fixation on delivery of Internet by wire.

But the growth and the future of broadband are mobile. Just ask Facebook. The mobile broadband market has ignited major capital spending by US companies -- six times more per subscriber than global counterparts.

[Glassman is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he works on Internet and communications policy in the new AEI Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy]

[Commentary] The chairman of Sprint is putting on a blitz to sway skeptical regulators to approve his acquisition of T-Mobile US.

There are good reasons to approve Sprint’s acquisition of T-Mobile, but an allegedly lousy US mobile broadband market is not one of them. Son, the CEO of Sofbank, seems caught in a Japanese mindset where government supervision and intervention is required to be sure everything turns out the way the state wants it to. He embarrasses himself making such an argument at the US Chamber of Commerce, the bastion of capitalism.

The truth is that the US mobile broadband system is outstripping the world. It’s one of the reasons that the six most visited websites in the world are US firms and that seven of the ten largest Internet companies are US-based and just one is Japanese. The robust and competitive mobile broadband market has ignited major capital spending -- according to CTIA, the Wireless Association, six times more per subscriber than global counterparts. Meanwhile, data prices per megabyte have dropped 93% in five years.

As for a price war, T-Mobile has also started one. Who says there is no competition? Claims that the US mobile market is “not good,” that we have “terrible connections” (as Son said in a press conference) and that the US has “one of the world’s highest mobile fees” (as he also said) -- those claims are myths, perpetrated by interested parties, like Son himself, that are grinding their own axes.