Competition/Antitrust

T-Mobile announced it now covers 200 million people with Ultra Capacity 5G, the moniker for its 2.5 GHz coverage, which is six weeks ahead of schedule. It’s also farther ahead of its rivals than what was envisioned even a couple weeks ago.

Senators' year-end to-do list includes key Federal Communications Commission nominations and more funding for broadband and antitrust efforts. All eyes are on the Democrats’ social spending package, which includes money for broadband and antitrust enforcement and gives the Federal Trade Commission a long-sought fining authority. White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese projected confidence that the House would pass the package this week. Even if that happens, it will still need Senate approval, which will likely be pushed to December.

Congress will reconvene in mid-November to discuss Democratic lawmakers’ massive social spending proposal, the Build Back Better Act, which is poised to provide a historic funding boost to regulators who police the technology sector for privacy, competition and consumer protection abuses, among other key initiatives. Key provisions in the latest version of the bill aim to:

Passage of the Infrastructure legislation on November 5 was truly historic—surely the biggest boost ever to bringing high-speed broadband to every American household. While we get about the job of building broadband, we need to take up other communications issues that have been of even longer gestation and which have just as much, maybe more, urgency for our country. High on my list is media reform.

Technology and innovation have long been known to be key drivers of growth allowing companies and countries to better compete. The recent US infrastructure bill aims to foster such growth by providing for investments in digital infrastructure. However, these investments are nearly exclusively focused on better and more accessible broadband.

Vodafone has stepped up its push into the UK broadband market after striking new deals with BT’s Openreach and challenger network CityFibre that hand the group the largest ultrafast broadband footprint in the country. The deals mean Vodafone will be able to offer the high-speed broadband product to 8 million homes by spring 2022 at steep discounts as it looks to grow its share of the market. The UK company is Europe’s largest broadband provider, with more than 25 million customers after acquiring cable networks in markets including Germany and Spain.

Residents in unincorporated areas of Vanderburgh County, Indiana, will have broadband access within two years. AT&T will begin work to provide service to an estimated 20,000 county homes and businesses now that funding has officially been approved by the Vanderburgh County Council. Vanderburgh County Commissioners signed the contract with AT&T on Nov 8 for the $39.6 million project. Bill Soards, president of AT&T Indiana, said it will be about nine months before residents start receiving information to tell them service is available in there area.

In a large number of communities across the United States, shopping for Internet access is really challenging. It can be hard for someone to identify exactly what it is they will be getting when they order any given service, as well as how much they will pay for it. Significant information gaps, as well as inconsistently presented information, make it difficult for people to navigate the Internet service market.

This study examines how the level of concentration of a country’s mobile telecommunications market affects its competitiveness. We created a unique database with information on 59 countries, which we used to perform several estimations including an instrumental variable approach to explain the degree of concentration in mobile phone markets. Our first and direct estimation shows that the higher the concentration in the mobile market, the lower the countries’ competitiveness.