Why is there a selective political fixation on AT&T-T-Mobile's ~43% combined market share when so many related markets are dramatically more concentrated, less competitive, or even monopolized?
- This blatant competition double standard originates from the political agenda of the FreePress/Silicon Valley net neutrality regulatory complex that seeks a broadband industrial policy -- to create an information commons and generate tens of billions of dollars in implicit bandwidth subsidies for Silicon Valley special interests.
When the FCC does the "data-driven analysis" that it claims to value, it will discover a blatant competition double standard where broadband critics gerrymander and torture broadband market share statistics to raise the specter of a broadband "opoly" -- to justify broadband regulation.
- It is telling that opponents have to bring Verizon, which has nothing to do with the AT&T-T-Mobile transaction, into the equation in order to manufacture market shares of concern.
- The outrageous and unsubstantiated implication of opponents' "Ma Bell duopoly" narrative here is that broadband competitors will anti-competitively collude, when all the evidence is that Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Metro PCS, Leap Wireless and others compete fiercely and relentlessly in multiple dimensions: price, value, device choice, quality, technology, plans, and innovation.
The opposition to this transaction is obviously political and a trojan horse to advance more net neutrality regulation to replace the broadband competitive marketplace with a regulated "information commons" that bestows billions of dollars in bandwidth subsidies on powerful Silicon Valley special interests and political allies.
It is easy to test if concern about AT&T-T-Mobile market share is based on merit and the facts or whether it really is political and a stalking horse for more net neutrality regulation -- like was imposed on Comcast-NBCU as the price for that transaction's approval.
Simply ask opponents of this transaction if they are concerned or doing anything about:
The brief illustrative data-driven analysis above proves that there is a blatant competition double standard.
- There obviously is a political campaign that focuses only on the unlikely potentiality of competition problems in broadband, while those same people totally ignore the very real and documented problems of lack of competition among Silicon Valley special interests who provide the funding for the net neutrality regulatory complex.
If people want to be credible in raising concerns about competition in certain markets they need to be consistent in raising concerns in any related market that has competition, dominance, or monopoly problems.
In sum, this blatant competition double standard has one obvious cause: the net neutrality regulatory complex, which is propelled by the twin engines of FreePress' information commons political agenda and Silicon Valley special interests' economic agenda for massively subsidized bandwidth.
