Google’s latest claimed antitrust get-out-of-jail-free-card is that Google is effectively immune from antitrust prosecution because it has a constitutional free speech right to free speech to rank and present its search results any way it wants, per a new Google-sponsored white paper by UCLA Law...
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Net Neutrality
EU’s regulated mobile prices much higher than US competitive mobile prices
The EU’s latest round of mobile price regulation provides a golden opportunity to show how market competition produces much better results for consumers than government price regulation. Ironically, the European Parliament voted this week to lower mobile roaming charges by mid-2014 to levels that will...
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Netflix’ Net Neutrality Corporate Welfare Plan (Part 10 of a Series)
Apparently Netflix is angling to become Silicon Valley’s king of corporate welfare. We learn from a New York Times economics column advocating for an Internet industrial policy that “Netflix is trying to build a coalition of businesses to make the case for… net neutrality.” And...
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Verizon-Cable Opponents Goading FCC to Overreach its Authority Again — Part 9 of Series
Opponents urging the FCC to block the Verizon-Cable secondary market spectrum transaction are pushing the FCC into dangerous institutional territory, effectively goading it to: overreach its statutory authority; ignore FCC precedent, evidence, and facts; and game its own spectrum-screen process. The same FreePress radical fringe...
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“Leaf” Vision & Broadband Usage Caps
Near hysterical opponents of broadband data usage caps need to breathe slowly, drop their magnifying glass, look up and take in the big world all around them. They are not just missing the forest for the trees, they are missing the leaves, stems, branches, trees,...
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Consumer Groups’ Advocacy Hypocrisy
Consumer groups by definition are supposed to be protecting consumers’ interests — not be pushing a special interest political agenda under the guise of the “public interest.” Let’s spotlight a recent and blatant hypocrisy whereby consumer groups near-completely ignored an instance of obvious widespread consumer...
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AAI’s Analysis of Verizon-Cable Is Industrial Policy Not Antitrust
Reading through The American Antitrust Institute’s white paper on Verizon-Cable, it is striking how little analysis is relevant to antitrust/market-competition and how it is basically a thinly-veiled tacit pitch for the DOJ and the FCC to pursue an aggressive industrial policy for the wireless industry....
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Objecting to Obsolete Obligations
The Washington Post’s lead story today, “Landline Rules Frustrate Telecoms,” puts a needed spotlight on obsolete communications law that: falsely assumes the telecom marketplace is still a monopoly with no consumer choice; and still mandates telecom companies subsidize below-cost, copper-line telephone service to households as...
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FreePress’ Latest Net Neutrality Folly – Pushing for Shareholder Votes
FreePress’ latest net neutrality folly and political agitation is pushing the SEC to make shareholders from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint vote on inappropriate, ill-advised, and unwarranted proposed shareholder resolutions in favor of wireless net neutrality in the weeks ahead. Let me count the ways this...
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Verizon-Cable Hearing Exposes Weakness of Opposition
The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the proposed Verizon-Cable spectrum sale flushed out the opposition’s best arguments and evidence and they proved surprisingly weak and sparse. Behind the façade of FreePress’ trademark bumper-sticker bluster of “a competition crisis,” “a creeping duopoly,” and “spectrum warehousing,” there...
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