About Scott Cleland
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You are hereRegulationWhy the Verizon-Cable Agreement is in the Public InterestSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2012-02-24 18:36
The evidence below shows the Verizon-Cable agreement is clearly in the public interest, if the FCC fairly reviews the agreement and all of the relevant facts, in the full context of the highly competitive wireless ecosystem. Top Reasons Why Verizon-Cable Agreement is in the Public Interest Increases competition: The agreement increases competition because it enables:
Spotlighting Threat of UN Regulation of Internet at CPAC TodaySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2012-02-10 10:22I will be on the CPAC Digital Liberty panel today with FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, Kelly Cobb of ATR and Ryan Radia of CEI. The very important sleeper issue I expect we will spotlight for the CPAC audience is the imminent threat to the Internet from a China/Russia-led effort to get the United Nations' International Telecommunications Union to regulate the Internet similar to the way they regulate telephony and postal service, via a renegotiation of the treaty that affects telecommunications in Dubai in December 2012. UN regulation of the Internet would kill the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg, by locking in the past and making innovation difficult in the future. This is a not so subtle effort to undermine and slow America's high tech innovation leadership in the world by miring U.S. Internet companies in the ITU regulatory swamp. UN regulation of the Internet is a big, under-appreciated, looming threat to freedom and economic growth. FCC Seeks Unbounded Spectrum Auction AuthoritySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2012-01-17 10:23At CES, the FCC signaled that it opposed any effort by Congress to give the FCC policy direction or to establish any checks and balances on the FCC in authorizing incentive auctions of prime TV broadcast spectrum. See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post "FCC Seeks Unbounded Spectrum Auction Authority" to see why the the FCC's lack of regulatory humility here is so stunning. Does FCC Want to Become The Federal Video Programming Commission?Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2011-12-21 19:00This week an FCC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ordered Comcast to carry The Tennis Channel in the same tier and channel neighborhood as The Golf Channel and Versus, another sports channel.
1. Implements Obsolete Law: The section of law at issue here, Section 616 of the 1992 Cable Act, is predicated on early 1990s market conditions of cable being a monopoly video distributor with large ownership interests in cable channels. Two decades later, that market assessment predicate is obsolete as cable now has only 60% of the video distribution market and dramatically less ownership interests in cable channels. At core the FCC has to decide if it is fair, sound or legitimate competition policy to completely ignore current competition facts. Verizon-Cable Spectrum: Is FCC Open to Competition?Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2011-12-06 15:16The out-of-the-box thinking that led to Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House to sell $3.6b of AWS spectrum to competitor Verizon is a watershed competitive development which ultimately will flush out the real FCC.
Top Ten Flaws in FCC’s AT&T/T-Mobile Competition AnalysisSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-12-05 18:24The unprecedented release of a FCC draft staff analysis opposing the the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile transaction could backfire legally, undermining its intent to backstop the DOJ's pending lawsuit against the merger. See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here on the "Top Ten Flaws in the FCC's AT&T/T-Mobile Competition Analysis."
A Problem in Search of a ProblemSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2011-11-18 18:28Professor Susan Crawford's attempt to manufacture a new net neutrality bogeyman, "The Looming Cable Monopoly," fails to persuade. See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post which deconstructs and debunks Professor Crawford's unsupported theory. The Politics of Regulating the InternetSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2011-11-07 17:47As the Senate prepares to vote on the fate of the FCC's net neutrality regulations this week, it's instructive to look more closely at the politics of regulating the Internet. Read my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here. NYT's Uninformed War on Competition PolicySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2011-10-26 11:34The New York Times editorial "How to Fix the Wireless Market," is embarrassingly uninformed and totally ignores massive obvious evidence of vibrant American wireless competition. The NYT's conclusion, that more wireless regulation is needed because of "insufficient competition," results from cherry picking a few isolated facts that superficially support their case, while totally ignoring the overwhelming relevant evidence to the contrary. The NYT completely ignores widely-available evidence of vibrant wireless competition and substitution: The Metamorphosis of Communications Competition -- A New FrameworkSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2011-10-21 16:32For those seeking to better understand how communications competition has evolved, expanded, and accelerated to cloud communications competition, don't miss my new six-chart powerpoint presentation: "The Metamorphosis of Communications Competition," here. My bottom line conclusion: The transformation of communications competition requires a transformation in communications law.
I presented this new easy-to-understand framework for understanding exploding communications competition at a NetCompetition event today on Capitol Hill, which also featured excellent presentations by Jeff Eisenach, Managing Director of Navigant Economics, and Ev Ehrlich, President of ESC Company. Pages |