FCC Adopts the 16th Mobile Competition Report

The Federal Communications Commission is required to report annually to Congress on the state of competition in the mobile services marketplace. In June 2011, the FCC released the Fifteenth Report, which provided an analysis of mobile wireless market conditions during 2009 and, to the extent data were available, 2010. This year’s sixteenth Mobile Wireless Competition Report updates the data and analysis presented in the Fifteenth Report, and analyzes mobile wireless service market conditions during 2010 and 2011, as well as during 2012 to the extent data are available.

The analysis includes “competitive market conditions with respect to commercial mobile services.” Like the Fifteenth Report, the Sixteenth Report presents a multitude of industry data on various aspects of mobile wireless competition. Consistent with the FCC’s first seven Annual Commercial Mobile Radio Service (CMRS) Competition Reports, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Reports did not reach an overall conclusion regarding whether or not the CMRS marketplace was effectively competitive, but provided an analysis and description of the CMRS industry’s competitive metrics and trends. The Sixteenth Report follows the same analytical framework used in the Fifteenth and Fourteenth Reports, with certain improvements based on responses to those Reports. The Sixteenth Report also makes no formal finding as to whether there is, or is not, effective competition in the industry. Rather, given the complexity of the various inter-related segments and services within the mobile wireless ecosystem, the Report focuses on presenting the best data available on competition throughout this sector of the economy and highlighting several key trends in the mobile wireless industry.