On Enterprise Broadband, The FCC Can't Leave Well Enough Alone

[Commentary] Back in 2012, I flagged what I saw as a cynical decision by the Federal Communications Commission to take a closer look at the fast-changing market for enterprise broadband services. Such services constitute the middle mile of the Internet, and include dedicated business-to-business access as well as backhaul for mobile networks carrying data from cell towers to the rest of the network. The FCC refers to these services as “special access." Even at the time, there was undisputed evidence of growing middle mile competition from cable and fiber providers offering faster IP-based connections. Still, the FCC bizarrely chose to reimpose price regulations it had long suspended on the rapidly fading part of the market offered by incumbent phone companies and their increasingly obsolete analog networks.

The FCC’s renewed tinkering with the regulated special access market, in other words, is simply prologue for future regulation of new cable and fiber-based competitors, all of it considered and applied at the same leisurely pace we’ve seen since the 2012 order. And why stop at special access? The FCC’s about-face on a decade of decisions to leave the middle mile of the Internet alone won’t just stymie incumbent phone companies eager to retire obsolete analog equipment. Next will be the first mile, the last mile, and every mile in-between. One way or the other, every participant in the Internet ecosystem will feel the hot gaze of the FCC -- or at least the ones the agency is pressured to focus its withering attention on by one set of special interests or another.

[Larry Downes is project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]