Competition

Google deserves kudos for standing up to net neutrality critics who want no restrictions on the use of their broadband service, and for standing firm on principle in its new terms of service that Google enjoys the broadband freedom to price-discriminate between consumer and commercial customers, and also between broadband use that doesn’t compete with Google Fiber, and broadband use that does compete with Google Fiber, because the latter would undermine Google Fiber’s ability to earn a return on its substantial infrastructure investment.

Just like the wisdom that one cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear; one cannot make “modern” FCC policy from obsolete communications law.

Apparently that is not stopping Former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and Greg Rosston from trying in their new white paper: “Articulating a Modern Approach to FCC Competition Policy.”   

Their paper contrives:  “three different competition policy approaches: the classicrole of regulating terms and conditions of sale, the modernrole of using various tools to create largely deregulated, multi-firm, competitive markets, and the laissez-faire approach of believing that unregulated markets, even if monopolized, will produce the best outcome.”

In a Washington Post piece, neither labeled as opinion or news analysis, author Timothy B. Lee, charged that “These charts show Comcast acting more and more like a monopolist,” but badly failed in backing up that highly pejorative “monopolist” assertion. 

Mr. Lee reprinted charts provided by Comcast to rebut a previous unsupported assertion by Mr. Lee that American “broadband speeds were stagnating.”

Mr. Lee’s attempted gotcha in his latest piece failed as a result of a demonstrably poor understanding of economics, competition, business and capitalism.

Please find the new Precursor online Research Library -- here -- which will be kept up-to-date going forward.

• It presently catalogues links to ~270 pieces of Precursor research in ~20 ongoing research series.

This should make it much easier to scan and find particular research of interest by subject and theme.

• An outline of subjects and themes are below.

Thank you.

Scott Cleland

Precursor LLC – Proven Thought Leadership

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "Arbitrary Spectrum Policy” -- here.

• It spotlights the FCC’s arbitrary treatment of its spectrum screen policy in approving Softbank-Sprint.
• It is also Part 11 of my Government Spectrum Waste, Fraud & Abuse Research Series.

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Government Spectrum Waste Fraud and Abuse Research Series

Just when the pending 600 MHz “incentive” FCC auction looks like it could not get more unworkably complex than a reverse, “incentive,” auction with looming FCC bidder limits, T-Mobile proposes to add a “dynamic” twist where the rules would then change as the auction goes along depending on how much bidders bid relative to a government-estimate that may or may not have any basis in economic reality. 

To use a diving metaphor, this is like a synchronized diving event with unknown dozens of divers that first must do a “reverse” back flip to “incentivize” another set of divers right behind them to then do a front flip, but only if the particular diver before them does a reverse back flip that individually gets a good enough score to make a follow-on dive possible, and then if that happens for some of the diver teams, any follow-on dives would then be scored “dynamically” depending on a random target score of the previous dive, which would then determine if said diver can dive again or not.

That’s essentially the latest T-Mobile “dynamic spectrum rules” proposal for the 600 MHz auction that T-Mobile just proposed and released to reporters.

It can and does get worse.

The economist behind the T-Mobile proposal was Deputy FCC Economist when the FCC was nano-implementing the 1996 Telecom Act and came up with TELRIC pricing and UNE-P. UNE-P was an elaborate FCC ruse to get around the plain language of the Telecom Act and get a 50-60% resale discount for all telecom services (a platform) for CLECs, rather than the ~20% platform resale discount methodology in law.

They were so wrong. To justify FCC market intervention, U.S. proponents of EU-style, heavy-handed broadband regulation trumpeted the narrative that the U.S. was falling behind the world in broadband.

The pro-regulation chorus of Free Press, Save the Internet, Public Knowledge, Susan Crawford, the Harvard Berkman Center, et al, sung from the same made-up song sheet that American business was failing and Government needed to take control of broadband networks to restore American leadership and prevent private enterprise from discriminating and censoring Americans free speech.

Now we know how tall a tale these pro-regulation pressure groups were willing to spin to advance their interventionist net neutrality agenda.

Facts are pesky things and the facts show that the U.S. is strongly leading the EU in the broadband race. It is so obvious even top EU officials admit the EU “needs to catch up.”

Let’s review the latest facts.

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "The New U.S. Spectrum Policy Has Big Problems” -- here.

• It critiques the new Presidential Memorandum: “Expanding America’s Leadership in Wireless Innovation.”
• It is also Part 9 of my Government Spectrum Waste, Fraud & Abuse Research Series.

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Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed: "FCC/DOJ’s One Gigahertz Spectrum Charade" -- here.

• It is Part 8 of my Government Spectrum Waste, Fraud & Abuse Research Series.

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Government Spectrum Waste Fraud and Abuse Research Series

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals 3-0 decision to overturn the FCC in Comcast v. FCC/Tennis Channel spells more trouble for the ultimate legality of the FCC’s Open Internet Order. That decision spotlights that three additional D.C. Circuit Appeals Court’s judges do not agree with the FCC’s reading of the law and the facts concerning lawful network discrimination.

On the margin, this new decision should make Verizon more confident and the FCC less confident in the outcome of Verizon v. FCC.

Overall, I believe Verizon remains more likely than not to prevail in its challenge of the FCC net neutrality regulations in the FCC’s Open Internet Order, because Verizon only needs to prevail with one of its many strong arguments while the FCC must win on all of them.

How is this latest D.C. Circuit decision relevant to the FCC Open Internet order case?