House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) took to the House floor to talk up the massive Moving Forward Act infrastructure bill, including its $100 billion in funding for broadband buildouts he says will close the digital divide. The $1.5 trillion-plus bill would allocate billions to subsidize broadband competition--including from municipal providers--in "underserved" areas which could mean where service is already provided by private capitol at just short of gig speeds.  "The pandemic has starkly demonstrated the need to ensure families all across the nation have access to high-speed internet," said Chairman Pallone. "The Moving Forward Act provides over $100 billion to fund broadband-related programs, which will get us to 100 percent internet coverage. This also includes additional funding for the Lifeline program which helps low-income Americans pay for their internet bills. Kids all around the nation need access to broadband to participate in their classes online for the fall and potentially much longer."

Comcast says its broadband network has earned high marks for its performance so far during the Covid-19 pandemic, and now Wall Street analysts are projecting more broadband subscriber growth for the company. Comcast claims its network is delivering above-advertised speeds nationwide, based on the results of more than 700,000 daily diagnostic network speed tests. Upstream traffic is up 32% as more Americans work from home, and downstream traffic is up 11%. The company sees its solid network performance as a bright spot in the midst of the Covid crisis. Comcast Chief Network Officer Jan Hofmeyr said that since 2017, the company has invested $12 billion to build more than 33,330 route miles of new fiber into the network and to increase network automation and artificial intelligence. The analyst team at Wells Fargo recently increased its Q2 estimate for Comcast broadband subscriber additions to 275,000 from 165,000, a bump of 66%.

Wireless infrastructure deployment, particularly for small cell or distributed antenna systems, promise smart city innovation abilities. But this rollout is likely to be stymied until resolution of disputes between industry and municipalities. Local officials are upset that federal intervention – by Congress and by the Federal Communications Commission – is hampering their ability to govern their own rights-of-way. Panelists of a webinar hosted by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors argued that local governments must take proactive steps to maintain their influence in negotiations with industry over small cell deployment. Although the FCC would prefer to ignore them, municipalities do have rights concerning the deployment of wireless infrastructure facilities. In particular, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which preserves local zoning authority over the “placement, construction, and modification of wireless facilities.”

On March 19, Sens Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Jon Tester (D-MT) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai asking the FCC to take immediate action to ensure that all K-12 students in the U.S. have access to the internet so that they can continue learning while schools are closed in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. On June 22, Chairman Pai wrote back saying, "The FCC aims to enable [the] transition to remote learning. But we face a major barrier: the Communications Act, which the FCC is duty-bound to administer, expressly limits the FCC's use of E-Rate program funding to broadband and other services delivered to school "classrooms" and libraries. Connectivity and devices supplied to students at home, unfortunately, do not qualify for E-Rate support under the law." Chairman Pai said he is working with Congress to appropriate dedicated funding for remote learning. 

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign demanded that Facebook prevent misuse of its platform by President Donald Trump to spread “hateful content” and misleading claims about mail-in voting ahead of the November election. The letter, signed by Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign manager, raised particular concern about revelations in a Washington Post article about Facebook’s history of reworking its policies to accommodate inflammatory rhetoric and false claims from Trump, dating to his time as a candidate in 2015. The story recounted efforts by Facebook executives to persuade Trump to tweak or delete a post about sending in the military to quell the protests in Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in police custody. The letter also makes requests, including that Facebook remove previous Trump posts that claimed, without evidence, that voting by mail, which has been widespread in numerous states for years, is a source of electoral fraud.

The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau formally designated two companies—Huawei Technologies Company (Huawei) and ZTE Corporation (ZTE), as well as their parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries—as covered companies for purposes of the agency’s November 2019 ban on the use of universal service support to purchase equipment or services from companies posing a national security threat. As a result, money from the FCC’s $8.3 billion a year Universal Service Fund may no longer be used to purchase, obtain, maintain, improve, modify, or otherwise support any equipment or services produced or provided by these suppliers. The Bureau Bureau bases its final designations on the totality of evidence, including evidence supporting the FCC’s initial designations and filings submitted in the record by Huawei, ZTE, and other interested parties. The final designations of Huawei and ZTE are effective immediately.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission issued new Vertical Merger Guidelines that outline how the federal antitrust agencies evaluate the likely competitive impact of mergers and whether those mergers comply with US antitrust law. These new Vertical Merger Guidelines mark the first time the Department of Justice and the FTC have issued joint guidelines on vertical mergers, and represent the first major revision to guidance on vertical mergers since the Department’s 1984 Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which the DoJ withdrew in January 2020. The new Vertical Merger Guidelines reflect the agencies’ analysis of vertical mergers. The revised guidelines:

• Explain that mergers often present both horizontal and vertical elements, and the agencies may apply both the Horizontal Merger Guidelines and the Vertical Merger Guidelines in their evaluation of a transaction, as part of a fact-specific process that involves a variety of tools to determine whether a merger may substantially lessen competition.
• Clarify that its analytical techniques, practices, and enforcement policies apply to a range of non-horizontal transactions, including strictly vertical mergers, “diagonal” mergers, and vertical issues that can arise in mergers of complement.
• Clarify that when the agencies identify a potential competitive concern in a relevant market, they will also specify one or more related products. A related product is a product or service that is supplied or controlled by the merged firm and is positioned vertically or is complementary to the products and services in the relevant market.
• Provide detailed discussions, including multiple diverse examples, of the “raising rivals’ costs” and “foreclosure” theories of harm. In recent decades, these theories of harm have been the principle theories investigated in merger reviews.
• Identify conditions under which a vertical merger would not require an extensive investigation, because the merger does not create or enhance the merged firm’s incentive or ability to harm rivals.
• Emphasize that analyzing efficiencies is an important part of reviewing vertical mergers.
• Explain in detail the analysis of the elimination of double marginalization (“EDM”), which economists emphasize is a frequent procompetitive result of vertical transactions.