The Federal Communications Commission denied an appeal from a California-based company that repeatedly disregarded its obligations to reasonably share a channel with other licensees. Mobile Relay Associates disputed the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s earlier imposition of a fine for improperly monopolizing use of a shared wireless communications channel, failing to monitor the channel to detect possible interference problems, and actually causing interference to co-channel licensees. The Bureau had warned the company repeatedly to change its behavior, but Mobile Relay did not do so. That, in turn, prompted the Bureau to impose a $25,000 fine. The full FCC has now affirmed the Bureau’s action and demanded payment of the fine. The Memorandum Opinion and Order adopted June 13 denies Mobile Relay’s application for review of the Enforcement Bureau’s 2020 denial of the company’s petition for reconsideration of the Enforcement Bureau’s earlier Forfeiture Order.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Lakewood) announced an agreement on a broadband trailer bill to expand the state’s broadband fiber infrastructure and increase internet connectivity for families and businesses (AB/SB 156). The legislation includes:

• More vital accountability and legislative oversight
• Creating a ‘broadband czar’ and nine-member council within the California Department of Technology
• Hiring a third-party to build and maintain the ‘middle-mile network’–high-capacity fiber lines that carry large amounts of data at higher speeds over longer distances between local networks
• Investing $3.25 billion to target that middle mile and build the broadband lines
• Providing $2 billion for ‘last-mile’ infrastructure lines that will connect consumers’ homes and businesses with local networks ($1 billion for rural communities; $1 billion for urban communities)

A new paper by a pair of economists says the gains from infrastructure spending aren’t always clear-cut and recommends that policymakers examine the costs and benefits of each project. James Poterba, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-wrote the paper with Edward Glaeser of Harvard University for the Aspen Economic Strategy Group, a division of the nonpartisan Aspen Institute. In some cases, the authors write, the best solution doesn’t involve construction at all. Satellite broadband or 5G network access might be a good alternative to laying fiber optic cables to provide high-speed internet access to rural areas, they write. The paper suggests establishing an independent entity such as an infrastructure bank that would perform cost-benefit analyses on projects and that would fund only those where benefits exceed the costs. That would help keep political considerations out of the process, they write.

Tim Wu, President Joe Biden’s competition adviser on the National Economic Council, said “There is a growing sense that the forms of market power we see today are often different from the ones that the merger guidelines had in mind. Some mergers have gone through without a challenge, and it turned out to be anti-competitive." Updating the guidelines to meet the marketplace status quo was “in line with the thinking of a lot of scholars and critics.” Asked whether the agencies had enough resources to conduct reviews of old mergers, Wu said that both Congress and the White House “have given attention to supporting enforcement agencies.” The House is wrangling bipartisan antitrust legislation, which would bump up funding for those very agencies by hiking merger filing fees, although President Biden has not explicitly endorsed the package. And on July 12, House appropriators advanced a spending bill that matched Biden’s ask for an increase to the Department of Justice's antitrust division. Wu declined to comment on the vacancy at the DOJ antitrust division but insisted the White House was “not trying to play favorites” between DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission. (FTC Chair Lina Khan was nominated to the commission in March, while President Biden now holds the record for the longest time a modern president has gone without nominating someone for the top DOJ antitrust role.) “The DOJ and FTC are the frontline of antitrust policy,” Wu said, adding that there is a “renewed interest in administrative approaches to competition enforcement, and harnessing the rulemaking power of various agencies.”