When Competition Is Cooked, Consumers Are Toast

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice approval of the Verizon/SpectrumCo deal is inevitable. Some conditions around the edges will be imposed, as in the Comcast/NBCU merger of 2011, but they won’t grapple with the fundamental problem.

It’s as if we’ve allowed electricity transmission companies to dictate what brands of appliances can plug into the grid, who gets service, what people pay for it, what kinds of toast are permitted, and what uses of electricity are preferred. Non-affiliated information flows will be roughed up by discriminatory application of usage caps, technical speed-bumps, and many other mob-like techniques. Meanwhile, Americans are paying more than people in many other countries for services that aren’t as good, even as inequality in communications leaves more people behind every day. Fully 80% of Fortune 500 companies require online applications for jobs, but a third of Americans don’t have high-speed access at home.