From the Desk of Michael Copps: Why Give Up on Competition?

[Commentary] Go to just about any telecom conference these days, and some industry maven will make the case that restoring competition to the telecom world is so 1990s. Why don’t we all just recognize the inevitable, they ask: telecom is a natural monopoly, competition is a chimera, and the sooner we flash a steady green light for more industry consolidation and less government oversight, the better off we’ll all be. 19 state legislatures have removed regulatory authority from state public service commissions that for years have been trying to protect consumers and preserve competition. The consolidated world of telecom broadband did not evolve from the hand of God, the mysterious workings of natural law, or the inevitability of market-based dynamics. It was enabled by conscious decision-making at the federal level, largely through the abdication of its oversight responsibilities by the Federal Communications Commission over the better part of 30 years. But we can get competition back.