The unprecedented release of a FCC draft staff analysis opposing the proposed AT&T / T-Mobile transaction could backfire legally, undermining its intent to backstop the DOJ’s pending lawsuit against the merger. See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post on the “Top Ten Flaws in the FCC’s...
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Universal Broadband
The FCC’s public wireless network blocks lawful Internet traffic
According to the FCC’s own hard-to-find disclosure, the FCC does not operate its own broadband “public use wireless ‘Hotspot’ network” according to the FCC’s Open Internet regulations that it mandated for most everyone else. Without this link to the policy, one would have to stumble upon...
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Rural Cellular’s Dilemma: Can’t Win the Future, Anchored to the Past
The Rural Cellular Association’s opposition to the AT&T/T-Mobile acquisition puts a spotlight on the un-sustainability of the analog rural cellular model that is on the wrong side of broadband change. The clear but unspoken subtext of the RCA’s opposition is their recognition that their current...
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The Dangers of Over-Regulating Competition
As a regular reader of Steve Pearlstein’s Washington Post’s business column, I was dismayed at the consistent pro-regulation frame of Sunday’s piece on the AT&T-T-Mobile acquisition: “The Revenge of the Baby Bells.” The hallmark of longstanding bipartisan competition policy has been that if market players have...
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Denying Competitive Substitution is Weakest Link of FCC’s De-Competition Policy
In order to justify broadband price regulation in the Open Internet and Data Roaming orders, the FCC and FreePress must continue to undermine Congress’ competition policy by denying the increasingly obvious and incontrovertible facts that users competitively substitute broadband services between various broadband technologies like...
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FCC’s In Search of Relevance in 706 Report
The FCC’s latest arbitrary and capricious torturing of the facts, law, and common sense, in its most recent 706 report, makes it obvious that the FCC is “in search of relevance” and highly insecure about its authority and role in the broadband competition era. Apparently,...
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The Net Neutrality Accountability Gauntlet
The House’s rejection of the FCC’s December Open Internet order 240-179 is just the latest in an ongoing high-profile accountability gauntlet for the FCC’s unauthorized, unwarranted and unjustified net neutrality rules. While the wheels of democracy, public accountability, and the rule of law can turn...
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AT&T – T-Mobile: A Solution to Many Problems
Despite Sprint and Clearwire opposing the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile acquisition, expect the DOJ and FCC to approve it, because the DOJ appreciates the facts of vibrant wireless competition and because the FCC will come to appreciate how the transaction actually helps solve many of the FCC’s...
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Google: “Thinking big with a gig” or “Doing small at a crawl?”
It has now been over a year since Google promised with great fanfare that it would “make a meaningful contribution to the shared goal of delivering faster and better Internet for everyone” by offering “ultra-high-speed broadband networks… with 1 gigabit per second fiber-to-the-home connections… at...
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FCC’s Net Regs in Conflict with President’s Pledges
The FCC’s Open Internet order should be ripe for review and “fixing” given President Obama’s pledge in his SOTU speech last night: “To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I’ve ordered a review of government regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden...
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