December 2016

Each of these themes runs through the topic of these remarks: how the law, as I have seen it develop at the Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission, has and can create and protect economic opportunity in the marketplace of broadband Internet access services provided to individual consumers. I’d like to structure this discussion around four primary themes:

First, competition is the best driver of innovation and consumer benefits in the Internet ecosystem; that ecosystem in which broadband connectivity is a critical component. Thus it is important to understand the state of competition, especially in those high speed connections that provide today the platform for so many complementary services provided by what we now call “the edge.”

Second, both antitrust law and public policy must rest upon a sound understanding of the incentives and abilities of broadband providers to artificially shape competition not only in the markets for residential Internet access but also in complementary markets across the Internet ecosystem. Here it is valuable to reflect upon the decades-long conclusion that telecommunications networks hold gatekeeper power that can be used to threaten competition.

Third, government should protect competition from artificial constraint that injures consumers and, especially in dynamic markets, threatens the future of innovation. The shared, overlapping jurisdiction of the FCC and the division focuses on the review of telecommunications mergers. Such reviews should be carried out always with a clear- eyed vision of the impact of market conditions on consumers today and innovation tomorrow.

Finally, the FCC has determined that an Open Internet advances economic and social goals so important that they must be preserved in the face of both obvious and subtle threats; threats that have long-been identified as well as those that are nascent or novel.

Commerce Department transition briefing documents lay out actions, issues and potential conflicts of interest that Wilbur Ross will have to deal with in his first 100 days, assuming he is confirmed to lead the sprawling agency. The documents, which appear to have been prepared for members of Trump's Commerce landing team, shed some light on how the agency is framing a number of issues, including at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. For the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, the document raises the following for NTIA: 1) broadband and two possible bills concerning infrastructure and tax reform, 2) FirstNet, 3) a revision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 4) passage of the Mobile Now Act, 5) oversight of Internet governance, and 6) next generation 911 legislation.

One way to accelerate development and adoption of the Internet of Things is for the US federal government to be an early adopter. However, in addition to being an early adopter, the US government has a significant opportunity to support private-sector efforts at building the Internet of Things through other activities, including programs to provide technical resources; strengthen cybersecurity; develop industry-friendly regulations; ensure spectrum availability; support research, development, and demonstration; and coordinate stakeholders. Many of these programs are underway, although they often lack the coordination and scale necessary to support the Internet of Things as completely as possible. The purpose of this report is to shine a light on these activities, so policymakers have a better understanding of what is being done today and where gaps exist.

As the Evernote saga recently showed, there are quite a few reasons for a privacy policy to exist, and one of those is that it helps the public know when the apps they use are breaking the contract between the company and the end user. But what if that contract just wasn’t there at all? Turns out that this is a more common situation than you’d think, in part due to lax detection and oversight.

In Nov, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University cranked up this discussion by analyzing 18,000 Android apps in Google’s Play store. Roughly half of the apps studied didn’t have privacy policies at all, despite the fact that more than two thirds of apps (71 percent) used some form of personally identifiable information on the part of the user.