Competition/Antitrust

U.S. Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) introduced the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act. This legislation would: 

CoBank's report reviews why the wireless and cable industries consolidated, and assess what could happen in the rural broadband market. Findings include:

Congress is spending $65 billion to connect the rural United States to the world. Orangeburg (SC) knows the stakes better than anywhere. Like hundreds of rural counties across the US, Orangeburg is ignored by commercial broadband service providers who think it’s not profitable to lay fiber optic lines in the area. In the absence of service from companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter, counties and small towns in rural America could build broadband networks for their residents themselves, which can make the difference between prosperity and poverty.

The township of Edison (NJ) has received a $2 million grant from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs to expand municipal broadband services. The Township Council passed a resolution accepting the grant, and Edison now has a 24-month period to build a portion of the infrastructure, part of which is a server, as well as a business plan which is expected to be completed soon, officials said. Previously officials have said the business plan would look at the strengths and weaknesses of municipal broadband and determine market competition.

The good news is UScellular ended 2023 with 114,000 fixed wireless access (FWA) customers. The bad news? The company lost about 53,000 postpaid phone customers, exacerbating a string of previous losses. Besides competing with the Big 3 mobile carriers, UScellular, a regional wireless carrier, is grappling with the rise of cable companies in wireless.

A new sports streaming bundle from ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros.

Lumen Technologies expects to build fiber to an additional 500,000 locations in 2024, matching its pace for 2023. However, some industry watchers believe Lumen could open itself up to fiber overbuilders if it can't accelerate its pace. During Q4 2023, Lumen deployed fiber to another 126,000 new locations, down from 141,000 in the prior period, but ahead of the 113,000 that analysts were expecting.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it's going to more carefully look at the "competitive effects" of T-Mobile's plan to purchase more 2.5GHz spectrum for its 5G network.

While the world awaits closing arguments later this year in the US government's antitrust case over Google's search dominance, a California judge has dismissed a lawsuit from 26 Google users who claimed that Google's default search agreement with Apple violates antitrust law and has ruined everyone's search results. Users had argued that Google struck a deal making its search engine the default on Apple's Safari web browser specifically to keep Apple from competi

There's one thing uniting big and small tech companies operating in Europe: they can't stand Apple's approach to complying with the European Union's new Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA designates six big tech companies as online gatekeepers—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft—and obligates them to open their platforms to competition. Apple's DMA compliance plan allows developers to set up alternative app stores and avoid Apple's in-app payment system.