Competition/Antitrust

A Senate panel approved antitrust legislation forbidding the largest tech platforms from favoring their own products and services over competitors’, scoring a win for backers of stricter Big Tech regulation against fierce industry opposition. The American Innovation and Choice Online Act moves next to the Senate floor, where several senators said they wanted to see additional changes before backing the measure. The January 20, 16-6 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee showed the bill had bipartisan support but also raised bipartisan concerns.

Ookla's Speedtest released its mobile and fixed broadband speed rankings in the United States for December 2021. Speedtest Intelligence revealed T-Mobile was the fastest mobile operator in the United States during Q4 2021 with a median download speed of 90.65 Mbps on modern chipsets. AT&T was second and Verizon third. This represents a strong increase in download speed for T-Mobile from 62.35 Mbps in Q3 2021.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a joint public inquiry aimed at strengthening enforcement against illegal mergers. Recent evidence indicates that many industries across the economy are becoming more concentrated and less competitive, and that these problems are likely to persist or worsen due to an ongoing merger surge that has more than doubled merger filings from 2020 to 2021.

Animated by hostility toward corporations and a belief that broadband should be a public utility, populists seek to overthrow the current system and replace it with one in which government provides broadband or tightly regulates it. Their campaign strategy is to convince policymakers and the public that US broadband is a failure so they can build support for policies to weaken corporate providers and strengthen non-corporate alternatives, including government-run networks.

The Federal Communications Commission announced winning bidders from its 5G spectrum auction of flexible-use licenses in the 3.45 GHz band. The winning bidder information is available in the Public Notice released by the FCC. Gross proceeds for the auction exceeded $22.5 billion.

As a cautionary tale to any city that provides broadband, incumbent internet service providers (ISPs) are always going to push back on city initiatives. In 2021, the city of Tucson (AZ) launched a free wireless network to bring broadband to students in homes without broadband. Tucson recognized the need for the network when it got requests for over 7,000 wireless access points from students during the pandemic. The city then decided that the best long-term solution to the large numbers of unserved students was to create a private network using CBRS spectrum.

Lawmakers and lobbyists anticipate a major fight over antitrust bills meant to tame Big Tech before the midterms put an unofficial end to the legislative effort. The bills could remake how Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google operate and treat competitors — if they make it over the finish line.

Ting Internet geared up to tackle its largest market yet, striking a deal with Colorado Springs Utilities to become the anchor tenant on a city-wide fiber network the electric, water and gas company plans to build. The forthcoming fiber network will pass upwards of 200,000 addresses, with construction set to begin by Q3 of this year. Ting said it plans to hire a dedicated team to serve Colorado Springs (CO) customers and expects to begin providing service in the city in 2023.

Lumen plans to increase locations reached by fiber from the current 2.5 million to 12 million, representing a five-times increase over the company’s traditional deployment rate according to President and CEO Jeff Storey. Those deployments target the 16 states that Lumen will retain after plans to sell its local exchange business in 20 states to Apollo Funds are completed.

Over 230 communities have applied for National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Broadband Infrastructure Program grants. But community leaders increasingly say they’re facing costly, unnecessary challenges from incumbent broadband providers, who are exploiting unreliable US broadband maps to overstate existing coverage and defend the status quo.