Ownership

Many US voters in a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll, including pluralities of both Democrats and Republicans, said they’d like to see the next Congress make it a top priority to pass measures that better protect consumer data, outweighing other more partisan concerns such as efforts to codify network neutrality and addressing allegations of political bias and censorship on social media.

Department of Justice antitrust chief Makan Delrahim put an exclamation point on what might now be called the AT&T/Time Warner Doctrine given the confluence of that case with Delrahim's emphasis on spin-offs versus conditions in vertical mergers: "If a structural remedy isn’t available, then, except in the rarest of circumstances, we will seek to block an illegal merger."

For Louis Brandeis, antitrust would serve both social and economic goals. He saw complete harmony in critiquing the economic justification for corporate power, on terms familiar to modern antitrust analysis, while pressing the larger case for democracy and industrial liberty. Legislatures can, and should, take an expansive view. As a starting point, Brandeis believed that values other than economics would be served by the protection of competition through antitrust, chief among them the preservation of democracy and individual initiative. This was not a subtle view.

The top executives at Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have stayed on the political sidelines during the 2018 midterm elections, opting not to donate to federal candidates who might advance Silicon Valley’s political agenda — or battle back President Donald Trump. Two years ago, these tech leaders emerged as some of President Trump’s biggest critics, challenging his administration publicly on issues including immigration, climate change and gender equality.

President Donald Trump said his administration is looking seriously at antitrust investigations of Google, Facebook and Amazon. In the next breath, he argued they are great companies that he wants to help. "I leave it to others, but I do have a lot of people talking about monopoly when they mention those three in particular." "We are looking at [antitrust] very seriously ... Look, that doesn't mean we're doing it, but we're certainly looking and I think most people surmise that, I would imagine," he said.

An Oct 23 interview with Sen Mark Warner (D-VA).

CNN president Jeff Zucker, the guy who first brought our president to the small screen when he green-lighted The Apprentice in 2004 while running NBC, had arguably schooled Donald Trump in the art of reality television. Halfway through President Trump’s first term, his instincts remain just as acute. If Fox News represents President Trump’s base and MSNBC has become a friendly platform for the resistance, CNN is the arena where both sides show up for cantankerous battle. “On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump,” Zucker said.

T-Mobile disclosed a major new spectrum deal with Sprint that the company said stands apart from the two carriers’ plans to merge. However, details of the new transaction are vague at best.

Privacy controversies continue to plague Google. In this seemingly unshakeable cycle of improvements and gaffes, it's nearly impossible to make a full accounting of Google's user privacy impacts and protections. But it's critical to understand how the people on the front lines of that fight think about their jobs, and how it fits in with the fundamental truth of how Google makes money.

USTelecom recently released an update to its US broadband industry capital spending series. In this update, USTelecom reported that sector investment rose $1.5 billion (or 2%) between 2016 and 2017—a reversal of a two-year decline following the 2015 Open Internet Order.