Category Archives: Broadband

In Delay there is No Plenty: Economic Impacts of the FCC’s C-Band Plan

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This morning, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is scheduled to be the sole witness at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee entitled “Oversight of FCC Spectrum Auctions Program.” The Commission has recently completed Auction 103 and Auction 105 (3.5 GHz) is under way, but with committee chairman Senator John Kennedy’s long-standing interest in the C-Band, this hearing likely will focus on the upcoming auction of approximately 280 MHz of this prime mid-band spectrum for commercial mobile broadband use that was formerly reserved for satellite communications. Senator Kennedy has been wary of Chairman Pai’s carefully structured decision that balances Continue Reading »

Welcoming Private Sector Efforts to Increase Broadband Adoption…

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According to U.S. Census data, in 2017 about 78% of Americans accessed the Internet at home over a fixed, terrestrial connection.  Like most goods and services, adoption rises sharply with income.  Only about 60% of households with annual incomes less than $30,000 have fixed broadband at home compared to 82% of homes with higher incomes.  Overseas, many developing nations have extremely low Internet adoption rates.  While much of our domestic policy discussion focuses on a lack of availability in more rural areas, the lack of adoption is as big a contributor, if not a bigger one, to the Digital Divide.  Continue Reading »

Municipal Broadband and Predatory Pricing…

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In the wake of the Federal Communication Commission’s pre-emption of state laws overseeing municipal broadband networks in North Carolina and Tennessee, I was asked by the State Government Leadership Foundation (SGLF)—a non-profit organization that helps state governments develop sound policy through education, research, and training—to conduct an economic analysis of municipal broadband to help state legislators better understand the issue.  Last month, the SGLF released the final product of my effort.  The paper is both long (nearly 70 pages) and dense, using economic theory to describe what municipal broadband is and what it is not.  I don’t wish to cover Continue Reading »

2014 Year in Review…

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2014 provided fertile soil for those interested in policy research. So with New Years rapidly approaching, I want to uphold tradition and use our last blog post of the year to highlight what we at the Phoenix Center thought to be the most interesting policy issues of 2014 and to provide some select examples of where we believed we added constructively to the debate. Spectrum Availability and Allocation While spectrum policy is always complex, the debate again boiled down to the fundamental questions: how do we free up more spectrum; and once we do, how do we allocate it? For Continue Reading »

Tariffing the Internet: A Response to Harold Feld (Part Deux)…

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On October 2, 2014, Harold Feld of Public Knowledge defiantly declared that net neutrality was not about a “terminating service” provided by broadband providers to edge providers, but rather it’s about the regulation of retail broadband service.  His position on this matter was unequivocal and characteristically bumptious.  Harold’s blog was, in part, a response to my paper, Tariffing Internet Termination:  Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service, in which Larry Spiwak and I detailed why the termination market was the relevant market for net neutrality regulation (see Larry’s summary here).  Ignoring the plain text of the Continue Reading »

Will the Virtuous Circle be Unbroken?

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Regardless of whether the Federal Communications Commission ultimately reclassifies broadband termination as a Title II telecommunications service or not, the agency will likely justify its efforts to regulate broadband service based on its mandate in Section 706 to “encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans” using “measures that promote competition [and] remove barriers to infrastructure investment.”  Indeed, at the center of the agency’s net neutrality argument is the theory of a “virtuous circle,” whereby innovation and investment at the edge of the network increases the demand for advanced telecommunications capability” and Continue Reading »

The Problems With Henry Waxman’s “Hybrid” Legal Theory…

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Last week, Representative Henry Waxman—the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee—wrote a letter to Federal Communications Chairman Tom Wheeler where he proposed a new and quite peculiar “hybrid” legal theory to support aggressive new Open Internet Rules.  Under Mr. Waxman’s three-step theory, the FCC would first reclassify broadband Internet access as a Title II common carrier telecommunications service.  Next, Mr. Waxman would have the Commission use its authority under Section 10 to forbear from nearly all of Title II—including even Section 201 (requiring “just and reasonable” rates) and Section 202 (prohibiting “unreasonable discrimination”). Finally, having dispensed Continue Reading »

Tariffing the Internet: A Response to Harold Feld…

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Last month, Larry Spiwak and I released a paper entitled Tariffing the Internet: Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service. In this paper (and companion op-ed), we set out to answer a critical question—how exactly does reclassifying broadband as a Title II, common-carrier telecommunications service protect the Open Internet?  Despite the millions of comments filed in the FCC’s Open Internet Docket, this most basic question has yet to be asked much less answered.  If the Commission does reclassify, then the agency must design, implement and administer a particular set of rules that achieves the desired goal Continue Reading »

An Epiphany at Free Press on Reclassification?

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Yesterday, the Phoenix Center held a Teleforum to present our paper Tariffing the Internet: Pricing Implications of Classifying Broadband as a Title II Telecommunications Service and to discuss its implications with a series of experts. (We hope to post the video of the event on the Phoenix Center’s Phoenix Center’s YouTube Channel shortly.)  To summarize the paper, we show that if the Federal Communications Commission uses Title II common carrier telecommunications regulations to protect the “Open Internet,” then all edge providers (e.g., Google, Netflix, and your personal website) will be required to make direct payments to Broadband Service Providers (“BSPs” Continue Reading »

A Troubling New Legal Standard for Section 706…

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Last week, the D.C. Circuit in Verizon v. FCC issued its much-anticipated ruling on the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order.  In this decision, the court found that because the FCC had determined that broadband is not being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis to all Americans, Section 706 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act vests the agency “with affirmative authority to enact measures encouraging the deployment of broadband infrastructure” and, by extension, the power “to promulgate rules governing broadband providers’ treatment of Internet traffic.” (Slip Op. at 4.)  While the court remanded both the “no blocking” and “non-discrimination” portions Continue Reading »