I am just starting to review the
FCC's new report on the state of wireless competition but had to blog first on the extraordinary success of net neutrality without net neutrality.
Let me share some remarkable statistics from the FCC's report about wireless.
Since 1994: price per minute fell 86% from 47 cents to 7 cents; subscribers grew 788% from 24m to 213m American users; and American's average monthly bill has fallen from $56.21 to $49.98 despite an explosion in average usage by Americans. What's not to like?
So why did I highlight 1994? Becuase this marketplace success is the direct result of de-regulation! In 1993, Congress passed a law to encourage more competition to the then Bell dominated cellular market. As part of that de-regulation, wireless no longer was regulated like a common carrier for rates -- hence why I have long said that wireless has not had a net neutrality-like restriction since 1993. Free of restrictive rate regulation and flush with new auctioned PCS spectrum, wireless competition has flourished since 1993.
You may not have known two interesting facts that prove the ineptitude and backwardness of a heavy regulated monopoloy mindset.
First, cell phone technology was invented in 1960, yes 1960; it did not get licensed for consumer use by the regulatory-minded FCC for over two decades!
When the former AT&T monopoly was broken up by the DOJ for antitrust violations, AT&T chose to spin off its wireless operations to the Bell companies because in 1982 AT&T estimated the wireless market potential to be only 1 million users nation wide by the year 2000. (In fact there were 109m american wireless users in 2000, only off by a factor of one hundred times, proving how bad the old monopoly mindset was in promoting new technologies.)
This was not coincidence! De-regulation and competition policy works!
So why do the Snowe-Dorgan and Markey Bills propose to regulate the competitive wireless industry with 1960s common carrier-like rate regulation of net neutrality? Ask them please! It makes absolutely no sense to me.
