Comcast and Level 3 Dispute Shows Need for Transparency In Peering Agreements

The New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative, Media Access Project, and Free Press sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Federal Communications Commission urging an investigation of the dispute between Comcast Corporation and Level 3 Communications. The letter argues that peering agreements are rarely transparent and that an investigation is needed to reveal how peering agreements are negotiated and whether companies are acting in an anticompetitive manner.

This recent dispute raises three primary concerns:

1. Whether and how last-mile providers might leverage their relationship with broadband consumers to act in an anticompetitive manner;
2. Whether last-mile providers can leverage their market power to harm their competitors in the market for Internet content, particularly in the light of the proposed Comcast/NBC Universal merger; and,
3. How disputes could lead to disruptive outages that cripple the functioning of our communications infrastructure.