America’s failure on internet competition

[Commentary] With a speed many American internet users can only envy, the Trump administration is re-writing the rules for US internet providers. The administration is quite right that the industry has a serious problem: lack of competition. But a regulatory rollback, paired with the administration’s apparently sanguine attitude towards industry consolidation, will do nothing to solve it, and could make matters worse. The root problem is lack of competition in network construction and improvement. If consumers had more options, fewer rules would be required. President Donald Trump likes to talk about infrastructure investment. Encouraging investment in digital infrastructure — a natural area for private-public partnership — should be part of that agenda. That would do much more good than rolling back sensible if imperfect rules and waving through deals in an industry that already has the upper hand on the consumer.