The Federal Communications Commission is required to publish a Communications Marketplace Report every two years that assesses the state of competition across the broader communications marketplace. The FCC must evaluate competition to deliver voice, video, audio, and data services among providers of telecommunications, providers of commercial mobile service, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs), broadcast stations, providers of satellite communications, Internet service providers (ISPs), and other providers of communications services.  As part of its evaluation, the FCC must consider all forms of competition, including “the effect of intermodal competition, facilities-based competition, and competition from new and emergent communications services.”  The FCC also must assess whether laws, regulations, regulatory practices, or marketplace practices pose a barrier to competitive entry into the communications marketplace or to the competitive expansion of existing providers of communications service. This 2024 Communications Marketplace Report assesses the state of all forms of competition in the communications marketplace; the state of deployment of communications capabilities, including advanced telecommunications capability; and barriers to competitive entry, including entry barriers for entrepreneurs and other small businesses. As the FCC observed in 2022, the U.S. communications marketplace has experienced significant changes in recent years, beginning with fixed broadband.  The federal government has directed billions in funding for broadband deployment and adoption, culminating in the $65 billion investment in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and millions have been connected through these and related programs. The FCC’s National Broadband Map now shows the public where broadband is and is not available at a more granular and detailed level than ever before.  And new technologies, in particular 5G fixed wireless and low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites provide additional intermodal options, especially for consumers in rural areas.  Nevertheless, more than a third of Americans have only one provider of high-speed broadband or lack access altogether.  For its part, the Commission has acted to increase competition and protect consumers in the marketplace, by mandating easy-to-understand consumer broadband lab

We are thrilled to announce that all agency requests for funding to complete the Lower 3 GHz and 7/8 GHz band studies have been approved by the Technical Panel established by the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act. The Lower 3 GHz and 7/8 GHz bands pose both promise and unprecedented complexity for evaluating repurposing possibilities that meet those needs. Ten agencies operate incumbent systems in these bands, including point-to-point links, satellite networks, and radar systems based on land, air, and sea that operate at short, medium, and long ranges. Together, these agencies submitted sixteen distinct plans, some of which were comprised of equally complex underlying component plans, to support their role in these vital studies. The Technical Panel, composed of one member each from National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Federal Communications Communication, completed a rigorous review to ensure that the plans will advance the goals of the studies and meet all statutory factors.

The global wall of resistance to Elon Musk’s satellite business is crumbling. Even before Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Donald Trump retake the US presidency, SpaceX’s Starlink was picking off swaths of the world country by country. Now, worries that the world’s richest person would subvert sensitive state-run telecommunications channels around the globe are being replaced by attempts by government officials trying to tap economic incentives from Musk’s industrial complex of companies. Musk’s new role makes it harder for some governments to resist Starlink, yet it creates more tensions for others such as Taiwan that are resisting the service. With the SpaceX chief executive officer already making his political presence felt alongside Trump on calls with foreign leaders, authorities everywhere are reckoning with how much further to open the doors to Starlink.

President-elect Donald J. Trump and his allies have vowed to squash an online “censorship cartel” of social media firms that they say targets conservatives. Already, the president-elect’s newly chosen regulators at the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have outlined plans to stop social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube from removing content the companies deem offensive — and punish advertisers that leave less restrictive platforms like X in protest of the lack of moderation. In Europe, social media companies face the opposite problem. There, regulators accuse the platforms of being too lax about the information they host, including allowing posts that stoked political violence in Britain and spread hate in Germany and France. Trump’s return to the White House is expected to widen the speech divide that has long existed between the United States and Europe, setting up parallel regulatory systems that tech policy experts say could influence elections, public health and public discourse. That’s putting social media companies in the middle of a global tug of war over how to police content on their sites.

Jonathan Kanter has stepped down as one of President Joe Biden’s top antitrust enforcers, but he is hopeful that the next administration will uphold the crackdown on corporate power that he has helped unleash. Since taking the job in 2021, Kanter shook the establishment by rejecting the notion that corporate growth be tolerated so long as consumers were not harmed—a shift from the “consumer welfare” standard that has underpinned US antitrust policy since the 1970s. During his tenure he has successfully blocked several major deals, and his tough enforcement posture led to a wave of abandoned deals. Sweeping monopolisation lawsuits, once a rarity, are proceeding against Google and Apple, as well as other corporate giants, including Visa and Ticketmaster. Alongside Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, he sought novel applications of century-old competition laws to address harm against workers as well as new market dynamics such as private equity groups rolling up chunks of the US economy. But whether he and Khan have caused a lasting sea change in corporate America or will see their signature achievements thrown out by courts or walked back by their successors remains to be seen.

It seems like almost every major action taken by the Federal Communications Commission get appealed these days. In a demonstration of how slow the courts can be, in September 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld the original FCC order from June 2020 that made it easier for wireless carriers to locate new towers and transmitters. The new rules ordered by the FCC then have been on hold for four years while the courts considered the issues under appeal. The original order had been issued during the Ajit Pai FCC, with votes following party lines. Unfortunately, having challenges to rules made by the FCC and other regulatory bodies is becoming the new norm. Several recent Supreme Court rulings make it even easier to challenge orders. Industry insiders often argue about which FCC regime has been the most productive. But perhaps we can’t compare FCC regimes by the actions they take, but must instead wait for a few years to see what actions actually went into effect.