Competition/Antitrust

On January 24, 2025, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr ended the FCC’s consideration of a 2024 proposal that sought to regulate so-called “bulk billing” arrangements. These bulk billing programs have enabled families living in apartments and other multi-tenant environments to pay lower prices for Internet service. Chairman Carr said, "During the Biden-Harris Administration, FCC leadership put forward a ‘bulk billing’ proposal that could have raised the price of Internet service for Americans living in apartments by as much as 50 percent.

President Joe Biden used his final address from the Oval Office to deliver a somber warning about the threat posed by the “dangerous concentration of power” in the hands of wealthy and well-connected individuals, a thinly veiled reference to billionaire technology executives who have been increasingly signaling their desire to work closely with President-elect Donald Trump. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” President B

The Federal Communications Commission released the 2024 Communications Marketplace Report on December 31. By law, the FCC must publish a Communications Marketplace Report every two years, assessing the state of competition across the broader communications marketplace.

The Federal Communications Commission is required to publish a Communications Marketplace Report every two years that assesses the state of competition across the broader communications marketplace. The FCC must evaluate competition to deliver voice, video, audio, and data services among providers of telecommunications, providers of commercial mobile service, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), broadcast stations, providers of satellite communications, Internet service providers (ISPs), and other providers of communications services.  As part of its evaluation, the FCC must

The Justice Department and a group of states asked a federal court to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet. The request follows a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S.

The European Commission has fined Meta €797.72 million for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers. The Commission's investigation found that Meta is dominant in the market for personal social networks, which is at least European Economic Area (‘EEA') wide, as well as in the national markets for online display advertising on social media.

According to GSA, which tracks the satellite industry, 34 countries are either planning, evaluating, or testing broadband satellites. There have already been satellites launched by UK, Mexico, Japan, Papua New Guinea, the United Arab Emirates, and Timor-Leste. The skies are clearly going to be filled with satellites in a few years. It’s not hard to imagine 100,000 broadband satellites in orbit in a decade or so. One has to wonder what this will mean in terms of price competition. Starlink has one of the highest broadband prices in the U.S.

The red wave that swept Donald Trump to re-election did not, despite what some podcasters might claim, originate in Silicon Valley. In San Francisco, rank-and-file tech workers still largely vote for Democrats. And while some prominent tech leaders came out in support of Trump—most notably, Elon Musk and a cluster of right-wing executives and venture capitalists who bankrolled his campaign—many others either supported Kamala Harris or parked themselves comfortably on the sidelines.

One of the enduring ironies of antitrust law is that governments often step in to solve perceived problems that market forces are already addressing. A prime example: the breakup of AT&T in 1984 didn’t bring about the demise of the Bell telephone monopoly. The real shift came from new fiber optic networks—launched around 1984—and the development of cellular networks. Now, we see the same pattern with Google.

SpaceX has used its position as the world’s primary rocket launcher to push rival satellite operators to share wireless airwaves, showing how the company can flex its power in one area to benefit another part of its business.