Competition/Antitrust

INCOMPAS is pressing the Federal Communications Commission to make the smart, transparent and expedient choice to save the Universal Service Fund. By evolving USF to include contributions from broadband internet access service providers, which the FCC could do immediately without an act of Congress, INCOMPAS says low-income families, schools and rural hospitals would all benefit from this renewed commitment to ongoing affordability solutions. INCOMPAS warns that the USF program is spiraling toward disaster, with contribution levels set to rise to nearly 40%.

National Economic Councilmember Tim Wu said the Biden administration has adopted a different perspective on how to promote innovation — while previous White Houses might’ve said “trust the giants,” this one believes “small is beautiful.” Wu, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, pushed back on what he termed the “monopoly innovation” theory that he says has dominated antitrust thinking for several decades. According to that view, he said, the high prices a monopoly can charge encourages it to innovate and develop new technologies.

Altice USA laid out a plan to deploy fiber to 6.5 million locations, or two-thirds of its entire footprint, by the end of 2025, planning to focus heavily on areas where it competes with Verizon’s Fios service and Frontier Communications. In 2022, it is targeting 1.1 million fiber passings in its Optimum footprint and 200,000 passings in its Suddenlink territory, for a total of 1.3 million new locations in 2022. It expects to add another 1 million fiber passings in its Optimum footprint in 2023 and 700,000 in 2024.

Analysts at Evercore Research, led by Vijay Jayant, conducted proprietary research covering a random sample of 10,000 residential addresses across the US to determine the availability of Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s home internet services. They found that 39 percent of total households have T-Mobile Home Internet fixed wireless access (FWA) service available, while 15 percent of households have access to Verizon’s FWA product. The addresses in Evercore’s research were proportionately sampled by state and chosen to match US population distribution among urban, suburban and rural areas.

UTOPIA Fiber--the operator of a Utah-based, community-owned Open Access fiber network--said it made fiber available to 26,000 new homes during 2021 and that 65 percent of new subscribers on its network are using services of 1 Gbps or higher, up from 48 percent a year ago. Regarding the jump in 1-gig subscribers, UTOPIA Deputy Director and CMO Kimberly McKinley said, “As consumers become more educated, they want the speed and capacity that gigabit-speed fiber can bring.

The nation’s eighth-largest cable operator, Breezeline, upgraded residential internet speeds on January 14th, doubling the speeds for many customers without any additional charges in select packages. The speed increases were delivered automatically to more than 125,000 customers based on their internet package. The faster speeds are also available to new customers. As a result of the move, Breezeline has boosted the speed of tiers with 50 Mbps Internet to 100 Mbps, and 100 Mbps Internet to 200 Mbps. Breezeline’s 400 Mbps Internet is now 500 Mbps.

On behalf of "America's Broadband Providers," USTelecom sent a letter to Biden Administration officials on how the administration can "make the most of America's $65 billion broadband investment." "Connecting every American, regardless of geography or income, will require unprecedented collaboration across the private and public sectors, spanning federal, state, Tribal and local governments," says the letter. "Getting the details right will ultimately make (or break) this work.

"The Federal Communications Commission has long banned internet service providers from entering into sweetheart deals with landlords that guarantee they are the only provider in the building," said Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. "But the record in this proceeding has made it clear that our existing rules are not doing enough and that we can do more to pry open to the door for providers who want to offer competitive service in apartment buildings. That’s why we take three steps today.

Internet-service providers (ISPs) weighed in on the White House‘s promotion of the 10 million households now served by its Affordable Connectivity Program. The ISPs wanted to point out they have been offering affordable broadband to millions through their own subsidy programs for years, though they welcome the Biden administration‘s help (as long as it is targeted to the unserved and not to overbuilding in the name of price and competition).

The Federal Communications Commission has adopted rules to unlock broadband competition for those living and working in apartments, public housing, office buildings, and other multi-tenant buildings (MTEs). To ensure competitive choice of communications services for those living and working in MTEs, and to address practices that undermine longstanding rules promoting competition in MTEs, the FCC takes three specific actions. First, the agency adopts new rules prohibiting providers from entering into certain types of revenue sharing agreements that are used to evade existing rules.