Category Archives: Industry Structure and Market Performance

Second Circuit Debunks FCC’s Set-Top Box Arguments

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Last February, the FCC launched yet another attempt to excise itself from (in the immortal words of former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell) the “Valley of Unattained Goals” of Section 629.  To justify its aggressive regulatory intervention, the Commission argued that (1) there is a separate market for set-top boxes over which MVPDs allegedly exercise market power; and, as such, (2) the rates consumers pay to rent set-top boxes, to put it colloquially, are “too damn high.” While such arguments make for great populist fodder, the problem is that the Commission’s foundational arguments underlying their set-top box proposal simply are not 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 »

Should the Government Allow Further Consolidation in the U.S. Mobile Market?

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Late last year I had the pleasure of participating in an event on Spectrum Auctions put together by the New America Foundation.  I’ve blogged about the event before, but when it was recently reported that T-Mobile’s CFO, Braxton Carter, stated that consolidation in the mobile wireless sector was inevitable (“It’s not a question of if, it is a question of when”), I was reminded of an interesting anecdote provided by one of the event’s other participants—former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt.     Specifically, Chairman Hundt was recounting his experience in designing and implementing the first PCS spectrum auctions back in the Continue Reading »

In Response to Mark Cooper…

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Last December, I authored a blog entitled Price, Profit, and Efficiency: Mark Cooper’s Bungled Analysis.  Using basic economics, my blog describes in detail why a report authored by Mark Cooper from the Consumer Federation of America (“CFA”) entitled Comparing Apples to Apples:  How Competitive Provider Services Outpace the Baby Bell Duopoly — Municipal Wireline and Non-Baby Bell Wireless Service Providers Deliver Products that are More Consumer-Friendly reached a conclusion that was not supported by economic theory.  Mark’s argument was that AT&T and Verizon charge higher prices and earn higher profits than do Sprint and T-Mobile and that such an outcome Continue Reading »

Price, Profit, and Efficiency: Mark Cooper’s Bungled Analysis

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Last month, I was generously invited to join a panel put together by the New America Foundation (“NAF”) at a Capitol Hill event entitled Spectrum Auctions: Promoting More Mobile Market Competition . . . or Less?  (For those interested, video of my panel is available here.)  It was an honor to participate, and kudos to Michael Calabrese from NAF for putting together a great event.  On the panel, I was joined by Mark Cooper (Consumer Federation of America), Fred Campbell (Competitive Enterprise Institute), and Peter Cramton (professor at the University of Maryland).  I found the discussion interesting, informative, and mostly Continue Reading »

New America Foundation Misinterprets International Data (Round Three)…

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Aujourd’hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.   This line, from Le Barbier de Séville, is translated as, “Nowadays what isn’t worth saying is sung.”  International comparisons of broadband services certainly fall into this category, and this week the New America Foundation is singing again with a 2013 update to its 2012 Cost of Connectivity Report.  While New America’s 2013 Report has garnered some glowing accolades in the press (see, e.g., here and here), the hard reality is that New America’s 2013 Report continues to commit all of the numerous technical errors I highlighted Continue Reading »

A Response to the WaPo’s Timothy Lee: Why Comcast is NOT Acting Like a Monopolist…

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In a recent article, Washington Post technology reporter Timothy Lee suggested that “broadband speeds were stagnating in the United States”, resulting in “slow innovation and poor customer service.” Comcast—the nation’s largest broadband service provider—begged to differ, and provided Mr. Lee with hard evidence indicating that the opposite was true. While Mr. Lee subsequently admitted his error and conceded that “Comcast’s service really has been getting faster”, Mr. Lee attempts to use the same data to argue that Comcast is “acting more and more like a monopolist.” Specifically, Mr. Lee contends that these data reveal that Comcast is “focus[ing] on maximizing Continue Reading »

A Fresh Analytical Start at the FCC…

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The Federal Communications Commission is at a crossroads.  Burdened with implementing laws designed for a market structure of a bygone era—and with little prospect of a comprehensive legislative update on the horizon—incoming FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler faces a daunting task to adapt and modernize the agency’s approach to regulation so that we can remove, in President Obama’s words, those rules which have “outlived their usefulness.”  Equally as important, Mr. Wheeler has the related and no less daunting task of re-establishing the FCC’s credibility with the industry, Capitol Hill, the courts and (most importantly) the public as the “expert” agency which Continue Reading »

Spectrum Exhaust and the Monopolization Narrative…

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In a recent speech, outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski once again reiterated the critical importance of spectrum policy “breakthroughs” to address the “tremendous stress” on the capacity of the nation’s wireless networks “from growing digital demand.”  While Congress and regulators are doing what they can, including addressing tower siting (here and here), reallocating and sharing government spectrum (here and here), and moving forward with the voluntary incentive auctions for broadcast spectrum, these actions represent only partial (and possibly untimely) solutions to spectrum exhaust.  Addressing the problem in the near term will require secondary market transactions for spectrum, where spectrum is Continue Reading »