A wide gulf between federal agencies on broadband competition

[Commentary] With the Department of Justice (DOJ) litigation to stop the AT&T-Time Warner merger set to go to trial on March 19, it is revealing to compare different views about network power from the agency’s perch on the north side of the National Mall with those of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on the other side.

In 2015 the Obama FCC justified its Open Internet Rules, in part, because of the lack of competitive choice consumers had in high-speed broadband service providers. The Commission found that two-thirds of American households had one choice for high-speed broadband at most. The Trump FCC chose to overlook this monopoly when it abolished the Open Internet Rules at the request of the monopolists. The Justice Department’s assessment of the broadband market is less fanciful: the Trump DOJ told the court that high-speed broadband is essentially a monopoly. For incumbents such as AT&T, the DOJ told the court that network expansion “has largely been limited to footprint expansion” – not competition expansion.

When the United States Department of Justice tells a trial court that AT&T has sought to use its network monopoly power “to slow the growth of its online competitors,” it contradicts the Pollyannaish portrayal of the broadband market propagated by the Trump FCC as it turned its back on an open internet. Perhaps the leadership of the FCC should have crossed the National Mall to gain insight into what is really happening in the market it is supposed to oversee.

[Tom Wheeler is the former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission]