About Scott Cleland
![]() |
|
You are hereDenying Competitive Substitution is Weakest Link of FCC's De-Competition Policy
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2011-05-31 18:32
In order to justify broadband price regulation in the Open Internet and Data Roaming orders, the FCC and FreePress must continue to undermine Congress' competition policy by denying the increasingly obvious and incontrovertible facts that users competitively substitute broadband services between various broadband technologies like copper networks/DSL, cable modems, fiber, WiFi/WiMax, wireless broadband, and satellite.
The indefensibility of the FCC's denial of competitive substitution is that in the December Open Internet Order, the FCC classified competing broadband technologies as providing the exact same Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS).
This ignoring of obvious marketplace evidence that any consumer can see clearly for themselves -- that different broadband technologies enable the same competitively substitutable Internet, voice and video applications -- is a quintessential example of arbitrary and capricious behavior by a regulatory agency.
Unfortunately, the FCC has a powerful self-interest to be "competition deniers" -- i.e. bureaucratic survival. As long as Congress, the courts, industry, and the public allow the FCC to keep their technology-silo blinders on, and only see intra-industry competition within technology-silos, and remain blind to inter-industry, cross-technology broadband competition, that was the core purpose of the Telecom Act and Section 706, the FCC will continue to deny effective broadband competition exists. In sum, what's badly needed now is much more research, surveys, and data-driven evidence that show consumers and businesses competitively substitute different broadband technologies routinely in the marketplace, so that the FCC cannot continue to deny effective broadband competition exists in stark opposition to reality, the law, and the real public interest.
» |