The Road to Nowhere: Regulatory Implications of the FCC's Special Access Data Request

[Commentary] Four years ago the Federal Communications Commission reversed a bi-partisan effort to deregulate high capacity ("Special Access") services and launched a massive data collection effort to refresh the record. This collection effort will not provide the proverbial "silver bullet" proponents of increased price regulation are looking for. Quite to the contrary, the FCC's Special Access data will likely show that regulation is unnecessary in many geographic markets and already adequate, if not too strict, in others. These data, or any legitimate analysis of them, do not permit the FCC to make any claims about the extent of market power and the need for more regulation of Special Access services, though the data may be used to get a feel of the extent of competition for such services a few years ago.