Competition/Antitrust

Even as AT&T continues to expand its fiber optic network to condominium and apartment complexes in Burlington (NC) — AT&T says that at least 10 condominium and apartment complexes are connected to its fiber optic network — most city residents and businesses don't have access to fiber optic Internet. Instead, they get their Internet service through slower cable or DSL lines. The average speed is 41.4 megabits per second, according to Broadband Now, a nonprofit company that tracks Internet access in cities around the country.

When we think about solving the rural broadband problem, nearly everyone tries to answer the question: “How do I find a carrier to serve rural areas.” But that’s not actually the problem we’re trying to solve. The problem we’re actually trying to solve is getting people access to quality broadband so they can participate in the modern digital economy and modern society generally. 

Reps Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and David B. McKinley (R-WV) introduced the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2018. This commonsense legislation, commonly referred to as ‘Dig Once’, would mandate the inclusion of broadband conduit—plastic pipes which house fiber-optic communications cable—during the construction of any road receiving federal funding. This practice will eliminate the need to dig up recently-paved roads to expand broadband infrastructure, significantly reducing the cost of increasing Internet access to underserved communities across the country.

A research note from New Street Research throws a little cold water on a potential 5G fixed wireless competitive threat to cable broadband. Verizon is expected to launch the fixed wireless service later in 2018 in 3 to 5 markets, including Sacramento (CA), a Comcast market.

Over the summer, FiveThirtyEight published two stories on broadband internet access in the US that were based on a data set made public by academic researchers who had acquired data from Catalist, a well-known political data firm. After further reporting, we can no longer vouch for the academics’ data set. The preponderance of evidence we’ve collected has led us to conclude that it is fundamentally flawed. That’s because:

AT&T and Comcast have solidified a court victory over the metro government in Nashville (TN), nullifying a rule that was meant to help Google Fiber compete against the incumbent broadband providers. The case involved Nashville's "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance that was supposed to give Google Fiber and other new Internet service providers faster access to utility poles.

The Federal Communications Commission could vote as soon as Feb or earlier to reduce the speed required for an internet connection to be considered broadband for purposes of the FCC’s annual broadband progress report. If the FCC opts to change the definition of broadband in response to the Notice of Inquiry, it’s important to note that the changes should only impact the annual progress report and not the CAF program. 

The Federal Communications Commission's decision to review what qualifies as high-speed broadband has drawn a crowd of critics armed with smartphones and other devices. Almost a dozen groups including Public Knowledge, New America’s Open Technology Institute, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) have launched the #MobileOnly challenge. Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, participants will spend an entire day only accessing the internet via a mobile device. The idea is to demonstrate that mobile has various limitations that make it not a sufficient substitute for wired broadband.

In January 2018, the conditions imposed by the US government on Comcast's 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal will begin to expire. Smaller cable companies that compete against Comcast are worried that Comcast will raise the price for carrying "must-have" programming such as regional sports networks, NBC's local TV stations, and NBC's national programming.

One reason why network neutrality is such a big deal is that competition among broadband providers is more limited in the United States than it perhaps has to be. Other countries have found a way to create competition: forcing big internet service providers to sell access to the “last mile” of their infrastructure to other internet service providers.