Broadband Competition Policy: The Final Thoughts and First Principles

Each of these themes runs through the topic of these remarks: how the law, as I have seen it develop at the Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission, has and can create and protect economic opportunity in the marketplace of broadband Internet access services provided to individual consumers. I’d like to structure this discussion around four primary themes:

First, competition is the best driver of innovation and consumer benefits in the Internet ecosystem; that ecosystem in which broadband connectivity is a critical component. Thus it is important to understand the state of competition, especially in those high speed connections that provide today the platform for so many complementary services provided by what we now call “the edge.”

Second, both antitrust law and public policy must rest upon a sound understanding of the incentives and abilities of broadband providers to artificially shape competition not only in the markets for residential Internet access but also in complementary markets across the Internet ecosystem. Here it is valuable to reflect upon the decades-long conclusion that telecommunications networks hold gatekeeper power that can be used to threaten competition.

Third, government should protect competition from artificial constraint that injures consumers and, especially in dynamic markets, threatens the future of innovation. The shared, overlapping jurisdiction of the FCC and the division focuses on the review of telecommunications mergers. Such reviews should be carried out always with a clear- eyed vision of the impact of market conditions on consumers today and innovation tomorrow.

Finally, the FCC has determined that an Open Internet advances economic and social goals so important that they must be preserved in the face of both obvious and subtle threats; threats that have long-been identified as well as those that are nascent or novel.