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Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
competition
Content tagged with "competition"
Infographic: The Market Has Spoken. The Market Is Broken.
“Monopoly” may be a fun family night activity, but if you live in a place where you have little or no choice for Internet access, it’s not fun and it’s not a game.
According to FCC data, most families don’t have a choice in Internet access providers, especially providers they like. Nevertheless, the biggest companies keep reporting increasing revenues every year. People aren’t happy with the service they’re receiving, but companies like AT&T and Comcast continue to thrive. What’s going on?
In a recent State Scoop piece, Christopher wrote:
[T]he market is not providing a check to AT&T or Comcast power. They are effectively monopolies — and as we just saw — can translate their market power into political power to wipe out regulations they find annoying.
At the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, where we work to support local economies, this broken market is a major problem. Cable monopolies are bad for local businesses, which become less competitive from paying too much for unreliable Internet access. Communities cannot thrive without high quality Internet access today.
We created this infographic to present the evidence showing that the market is broken. This resource also discusses why creating more competition in the current market is such a challenge. An effective way to overcome this broken market, however, is to consider what hundreds of local communities are already doing - investing in publicly owned Internet infrastructure. Our infographic offers a few examples of different models, each chosen to suit the communities they serve.
Get a larger version of the infographic here.
Get a larger version of the infographic here.
Kudos to intern Kate Svitavsky who created the infographic.
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Video On Community Networks: One of Our Favs
Take a minute to learn just a few of the reasons why local communities invest in publicly owned networks. Our short 2012 video is a great way to share information about community networks - there can be other options beyond big cable and DSL providers.
Christopher Discusses the Future of Community Networks on TWiT
On March 24th, Christopher was on episode 232 of the web show "This Week in Enterprise Tech." Christopher discussed the future of community broadband networks in the Trump era as well as shared information about the models of successful networks across the country.
Christopher begins his discussion of these issues at 29:45 with host Friar Robert Ballecer and guest co-hosts Lou Maresca and Brian Chee. Throughout the show, the group covers the beginning of the FCC Chairmanship of Ajit Pai, how the Senate is legislating against Internet privacy regulations, and how community networks are pushing ahead to achieve better connectivity for local businesses and residents.
The folks at TWiT.tv share excerpts from our video on Ammon, Idaho, and the guys get into a deeper discussion about the possibilities of local empowerment from community networks.
You can stream the episode at TWiT.tv, or watch here:
Crossed Lines: Why the AT&T-Time Warner Merger Demands a New Approach to Antitrust
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As federal agencies examine the potential consequences if the AT&T - Time Warner merger is allowed to proceed, how we analyze antitrust also needs to be reevaluated.
A new report from the Roosevelt Institute takes a closer look at how antitrust enforcement philosophy has changed, how that change has enabled our current state telecommunications in which a few large anticompetitive players control the market. The authors offer recommendations and cautionary predictions that may arise if we continue without reassessing how we scrutinize these large scale mergers.
Authors Marshall Steinbaum and Andrew Hwang complement each other with economic and legal approaches. Steinbaum is Senior Economist and Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and has also written for Democracy, Boston Review, The American Prospect, and The New Republic. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Economics Department in 2014. Hwang is a legal fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and has also been an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, working on transactions involving securities issuance, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate lending. He received his J.D. from the Duke University School of Law in 2014 and B.A. in economics and political science from the University of Chicago in 2011.
The report notes how scrutiny of mergers has come to depend on the perceived harm the results will have on consumers, but such a narrow focus results in harming competition.
Instead, regulators should adopt a more holistic view of market power, specifically incorporating analysis of upstream impact of anticompetitive behaviors, especially those enabled by mergers. This would entail closer scrutiny of vertical mergers, positive price discrimination, and non-price-based schemes to profit excessively by withholding access to consumers.
Several specific recommendations caught our attention as particularly relevant approaches, including:
Regulators should utilize Section 2 of the Sherman Act to a greater degree by taking enforcement actions against antitrust violators, up to and including undoing previous mergers that have proven anti-competitive after the fact.
Transcript: Community Broadband Bits Episode 241
This is episode 241 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. John Bergmayer from Public Knowledge joins the show to talk about the "bundle" in the cable industry. Are cable bundles a bargain as advertised? What do customers want? Listen to this episode here.
John Bergmayer: You know the structure of the programing industry and the structure of the cable industry means effectively they're not being served. They’re getting ripped off I believe.
Lisa Gonzalez: This is episode 241 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast from the Institute for Local Self Reliance, I'm Lisa Gonzalez. Cable subscribers often complain about bundling. Being forced to choose from video packages that include channels they don't want in order to get access to the content they do want. Why are we stuck in this model? And what are the ramifications for service providers? Especially now that so much content is available via the Internet. What are some of the concerns smaller cable providers encounter when negotiating for content? This week, Christopher talks with John Bergmayer, Senior Counsel from Public Knowledge who explains why Comcast and Time Warner Cable and other cable companies are so in love with the bundle. They discuss why it's difficult to move past this model and whether or not bundles are a bargain, as they are described in advertising. Or something quite different. Now here's Christopher and John Bergmayer, Senior Counsel at Public Knowledge, discussing unbundling and the world of cable.
Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another edition of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Chris Mitchell. Today I'm speaking with John Bergmayer, Senior Counsel for Public Knowledge, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC. Welcome to the show!
John Bergmayer: Yeah, thanks for having me Chris.
Christopher Mitchell: John, can you tell us a little bit about what Public Knowledge does for people that haven't been around to hear past interviews with Chris Lewis and Harold Feld and other great people that you have on staff?
Susan Crawford's Road Trip - Community Broadband Bits Podcast 242
Susan Crawford has come back to the podcast to tell us about her recent travels in North Carolina and Tennessee, talking to people on the ground that have already built fiber-optic networks or are in the midst of figuring out how to get them deployed.
Susan is a professor at Harvard Law, the author of The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance and Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, and a champion for universal high quality Internet access.
We have an informal discussion that ranges from what is happening on the ground in North Carolina and Tennessee to the role of federal policy to why Susan feels that municipal wholesale approaches are important to ensuring we have better Internet access.
It was a real treat to have Susan back on the show and to just have a discussion about many of the issues that don't always come up in more formal presentations or media interviews. We hope you enjoy it! Susan was previously on episode 125 and episode 29.
This show is 21 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.
Thanks to Break the Bans for the music. The song is Escape and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
The Cable UnBundling Challenge - Community Broadband Bits Podcast 241
One of the most recurring complaints about cable television is the bundles - people resent having to pay for channels that they do not watch. Especially when those cable prices go up consistently. The cable companies tend to absorb most of the blame and anger for this model, but they aren't entirely responsible.
To explain how the cable industry works, Public Knowledge Senior Counsel John Bergmayer joins us for Episode 241 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. We talk about overlapping monopolies, market power, and how the cable companies themselves are somewhat imprisoned by content owners.
As fits with our focus, we also talk specifically about how smaller firms (which includes all municipal networks) are particularly harmed by the status quo and even more harmed by the ongoing consolidation of the largest cable companies becuase they then have far greater negotiating power.
This show is 30 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.
Thanks to Admiral Bob for the music. The song is Turbo Tornado (c) copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Blue Wave Theory.
Ammon Launches Its FTTH; Bye-Bye Broken Market
Folks in Ammon, Idaho, are now getting choice, speed, and affordability from their new municipal Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network. Home owners are making the switch and waving "bye-bye" to the burdens of a broken market for the benefits of publicly owned infrastructure.
High Demand
Out of 369 homes in the first district, 239 have signed up to be connected to the open access network; 22 installations are complete. Installations are on hold until winter is over, but the city’s Technology Director Bruce Patterson expects to add more as people experience their neighbors’ fiber service.
In order to connect to the network, homeowners pay for the cost of the installation themselves either with a $3,000 direct payment when the project is completed or through a special property assessment over a 20-year period. Property owners who don’t want to be connected aren’t obligated to pay. Residents or businesses connected to the network then choose an Internet Service Provider (ISP) from those offering services over the network infrastructure. The network’s technology makes switching providers a simple task that can be done online.
ISP Like It, Too
Ammon makes it easy and inexpensive for new providers to offer services on their fiber as a way to encourage competition. Ammon told the Post Register:
“We tried to make sure the barriers to entry were as low as possible to encourage competition,” Patterson said. “There’s the potential for market disruption. If somebody else can get to you cheaper and present a better economic number, they have the potential to disrupt the marketplace, which is better for all of us.”
Kitsap Residents Demand Fiber - And Get it - Community Broadband Bits Podcast 237
When we first learned of the Lookout Lane fiber-optic project in the Kitsap Public Utility District in Washington, we knew we wanted to learn more. Kitsap PUD General Manager Bob Hunter and Telecommunications Superintendent Paul Avis join us for episode 237 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast.
KPUD has historically focused on water and wastewater services but they increasingly hear from residents and businesses that Internet access is a major priority. We talk about their approach and how neighborhoods are able to petition KPUD to build fiber to them. The first area to use this option had very poor Internet access from the incumbent telephone provider.
The discussion covers a lot of interesting ground, from how it is financed to where the demand is heaviest, and why public utility districts should have the option of using a retail model in some areas rather than continuing to be limited solely to wholesale-only by state law.
For related information, consider our coverage of the Northwest Open Access Network.
This show is 33 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed.
Transcript below.
We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.
Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.
Thanks to Admiral Bob for the music. The song is Turbo Tornado (c) copyright 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: Blue Wave Theory.
DOJ's Sallet: Competition, Innovation, A "Virtuous Circle"
On December 6th, Deputy Assistant Jon Sallet of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division spoke at the Capitol Forum Broadband Competition Conference in Washington, DC. Sallet spent several years at the FCC and in July 2016 announced that he would begin working for the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Sallet’s remarks emphasized the importance of competition for the health of the Internet ecosystem. He pointed out that, in order for residents, businesses, and other entities to get the most out of the possibilities of Internet access, policy, regulation, and enforcement must encourage the mosaic that comes with competition. The DOJ will have decide how it wishes to apply these considerations as it faces upcoming decisions about potential mergers, such as the proposed CenturyLink and Level 3 merger or the AT&T and Time Warner merger.
When shaping our approach, he argues, we must consider four powerful elements that require a delicate balance: