Competition/Antitrust

The Federal Communications Commission released a new, 182-page Communications Marketplace Report it claims proves the US broadband industry is awash with vibrant competition. In reality, consumer groups, third-party data and the report itself paint a starkly different picture; one where consumers increasingly only have access to just one Internet service provider: Comcast.

As a staunch supporter of limited government and free speech, I have regularly objected to government attempts to own and control the nation’s communications networks. I have been a staunch critic of government projects to build and operate broadband networks. Beyond flirting with a perverse form of socialism, municipalities’ overbuilding of private providers creates market inefficiencies, distorts competitive outcomes, encourages regulatory favoritism towards state-owned networks, and can be a waste of taxpayer money. Even in instances where municipal, or muni, broadband reaches unserved a

The Federal Communications Commission adopted its first Communications Marketplace Report, which provides a comprehensive evaluation of the state of the communications marketplace. As required by Title IV of RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018, the report consolidates several separate reports to address the state of the broader communications marketplace in one place. And as mandated by Congress, this report will be issued every two years.

With gigabit expanding across the nation, fixed broadband speeds in the US are rapidly increasing. Speedtest data from Q2-Q3 2018 reveals a 35.8 percent increase in mean download speed during the last year and a 22.0 percent increase in upload speed. As a result, the US ranks 7th in the world for download speed, between Hungary and Switzerland. The US ranks 27th for upload, between Bulgaria and Canada. Though 5G looms on the mobile horizon, fixed broadband speeds in the US continue to outpace those on mobile showing both faster speeds and greater increases in speed.

The Fiber Broadband Association and RVA, LLC released a new report on the rapid growth of the North American fiber broadband industry. Key findings include:

According to the Federal Communications Commission’s last-published report, 24 million Americans lack access to high-speed internet service, with 19 million of them in rural areas. But last week the New York Times offered new numbers and they’re problematic, too. It found that 162 million people across the country do not use internet service at broadband speeds. There’s a big delta between 24 million and 162 million. 

A series of interactive maps to visualize home internet access, covering more than 65,000 occupied Census tracts in the fifty states and the District of Columbia. On the base maps, NDIA calculated and mapped two crucial data points from census data: 1) What percentage of households in each Census tract had no home internet access at all in 2017 — not even mobile internet or dial-up connections?  2) What percentage of households in each Census tract had “Broadband such as cable, fiber optic or DSL” in 2017?

We have tried to rein in the power of telecommunications, media and cable giants for more than 30 years. In these important industries, strong antitrust has only worked when paired with equally strong pro-competition market-opening regulations. Antitrust alone cannot expand the diversity of media and content ownership that relies upon internet distribution. Antitrust alone cannot protect the integrity of individual speech rights that are essential to democratic discourse. And antitrust alone cannot foster innovation and entrepreneurship.