About Scott Cleland
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You are hereDeregulationWhy leading the Nation in regulating the Internet harms Maryland's consumersSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-02-19 23:15It looks like some national net neutrality proponents groups have suckered some well-intentioned, but unsuspecting Maryland delegates into sacraficing Maryland consumers as pawns in their national chess strategy over net neutrality. Maryland consumers deserve much better.
I'll bet the national activists that sold this fraudulent bill of goods to the unsuspecting state delegates, only told their unsubstantiated side of the story -- ill serving Maryland consumers and lawmakers in the process. WSJ lead editorial highlights the success of broadband competition/deregulationSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Fri, 2007-02-16 11:11The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial today: "Broadband Breakout" once again proves that they have a very knowlegable and sophisitcated understanding of the successes of broadband competition, deregulation, and competition and of the risks of "net neutrality" or Internet regulation The Journal also picked up the point I made here in a previous blog that you have to look at the trajectory of competition, is it increasing? Responding to SaveTheInternet's personal attack on meSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-02-15 18:26Tim Karr, the campaign director of Free Press that runs much of the SaveTheInternet effort, blogged a personal attack on me today, that I responded to on his blog.
Tim, It's not the first time I've been called names by people who wanted to discredit me and my analysis. Among others, you share the august company of the now-imprisoned Bernie Ebbers, who routinely derided me as the "idiot analyst" because I had his number in calling WorldCom "dead model walking" before anyone else in the country figured it out. He too was mistaken that name calling and intimidation could muzzle my views. Interesting takeaways from the first day of FTC conference on broadband connectivitySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-02-14 10:09Overall I think the FTC has done a pretty good job of presenting a balanced view of the net neutrality issue. I commend them for calling the workshop "broadband connectivity competition policy." That is what the issue is all about-- in generic non-loaded terminology. To be brief, I will highlight just what I thought was most noteworthy. The distinguished practioner and academic, Fred Kahn, is always a joy to learn from. Besides making his main point that government should resist its propensity to meddle he was particularly critical of many people's use of the term "discrimination." As an economist, he was frustrated that people were using the term discriminatory just if it was differential. For those that don't know or understand economics or competition policy, Mr. Kahn stated simply -- if there is opportunity cost involved, its not discriminatory. What he reminded people of is that there are lots of legitimate economic, functional, and consumer welfare reasons why service and prices can and should be different. Alan Davidson of Google clearly took a different tack than usual. He further retreated trying to respin Google's grandiose vision of net neutrality to be more "reasonable." He gave Google's blessing to the Internet continuing like it is -- charging differently for different speeds. He also gave America Google's permission to continuing caching and stopping denial of service attacks on the Internet. Thank you Google for your permission, it means so much. Alan Davidson of Google then went on to say that Google only has a very "small" problem with just "one type" of router discrimination -- trying to appear reasonable. Unfortunately, to anyone that uderstands networks and competiton, his "reasonable" approach is about as "reasonable" as a doctor telling a patient that all the parts of their body are healthy but that he just needs to remove their "small" cerebellum. Tim Wu's "datatopian" wireless net neutrality rejects competiton policySubmitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2007-02-14 00:15My core problems with Professor Tim Wu's white paper for the FTC on wireless net neutrality are with his disguised core assumptions. First, it is clear from Mr. Wu's top two recommendations that Mr. Wu rejects U.S. competition policy and wireless competition policy as abject failures.
Mr. Wu should come clean and just say in a straightforward language what his White Paper strongly implies.
Second, Professor Wu analysis suffers from what I call the "perfection fallacy." Don't miss Esther Dyson's sage interview urging restraint on NNSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-02-06 11:38I have attached the link to Esther Dyson's important interview on net neutrality.
Kudos to FCC Martin for proposing wireless broadband as info serviceSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2007-02-05 10:46I was pleasantly surprised and very pleased that FCC Chairman Martin proactively released a proposed order that would reclassify wireless broadband as a Title I information service, as reported in today's Comm Daily. This order, which looks to have the support of the Republican majority, would continue to harmonize the regulatory treatment of all the major modes of broadband.
Why this is relevant to NN is that the expert agency overseeing competition in this market segment is concluding that there is sufficient competition to not require common carrier-like regulation.
Wireless broadband dominates broadband growth in FCC Broadband ReportSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-02-01 17:52Evidence continues to mount that the broadband sector is increasingly competitive and that it is not the permanent cable/DSL "duopoly" that net neutrality supporters claim. The FCC just released its biannual report on high speed of broadband adoption and the new evidence showing more competition is powerful. The most important takeaway from the FCC's report is that 58% or 7.9m of the 11.0m total broadband adds over the first six months of 2006 were wireless broadband -- NOT DSL or cable modem. That's not how a "permanent DSL/Cable duopoly" behaves -- is it? My Legislative Outlook for Net Neutrality -- An enlightening read not to be missedSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2007-01-25 14:02Now that the Democratic-controlled Congress is back in full swing, and now that a lot of cards have been put on the table, its helpful to take stock of where we are on the net neutrality issue. Below I provide: an overview, a Senate outlook and a House outlook. My bottom line analysis is that there is a very low liklihood of net neutrality legislation passing in this Congress, despite the hype.
Overview: Given that net net neutrality advocates really want a change in the law, they badly blew their golden opportunity last year to get net neutrality principles into law -- by wildly overplaying the moderately strong hand they had last year. Yahoo stumbles as Google gains: Part II Google becoming "dominant" per antitrustSubmitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2007-01-23 19:09There's new evidence today that Yahoo continues to stumble as Google continues to gain market share. Yahoo just announced meager 13% revenue growth for 4Q06, while Google announced at the end of the year that Google's revenue grew 86% during the same period. (That's over SIX times faster for those who care about those things!) This is powerful additional confirmation that Google is quickly on path to reach 50% market share and beyond, a significant antitrust threshold of being considered "dominant" and warranting "stricter scrutiny" of its business practices for potential anticompetitive behavior. I explained the broader significance of this "dominant" threshold in my blog yesterday. Pages |