Why Anti-Piracy Legislation Will Become Law
November 2, 2011
Pending anti-piracy legislation (Senate: PROTECT IP, House: SOPA) is very likely to become law in 2012.
See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post to learn why, and why it’s important.
NYT’s Uninformed War on Competition Policy
October 26, 2011
The New York Times editorial “How to Fix the Wireless Market,” is embarrassingly uninformed and totally ignores massive obvious evidence of vibrant American wireless competition.
The NYT’s conclusion, that more wireless regulation is needed because of “insufficient competition,” results from cherry picking a few isolated facts that superficially support their case, while totally ignoring the overwhelming relevant evidence to the contrary.
The NYT completely ignores widely-available evidence of vibrant wireless competition and substitution:
- U.S. wireless customers are getting much more value for less money! The average local monthly wireless bill is down for the same number of minutes and for 111% more data usage!
- U.S. wireless customers use roughly four times more minutes of use than customers in most every other country in the world.
- U.S. wireless customers have more choice of handsets, over 600, than most any nation in the world.
- The U.S. leads the world in next generation 4G subscribers showing that the U.S. is leading in infrastructure private investment and innovation — obvious indicators of a vibrant competitive wireless market.
Most embarrassing of all is the NYT’s myopic fixation on texting and the price per text versus cost, which totally misses the importance of the wide competitive availability of free and better substitutes.
The NYT is ignoring that users can and do use free texting/messaging/communications services via:
- Apple’s ichat, messaging or Facetime;
- Facebook’s messaging or video chat;
- Microsoft-Skype’s calling or video conferencing;
- Google Voice, Hangout video conferencing, Google + messaging; or
- Twitter messages.
Simply, the NYT’s claim of insufficient wireless competition is shockingly uninformed — the editorial board should read its own business technology section more to get into the 21st century, because the era of black rotary phones, and brick-size cellphones has long since passed, as most every other person in America has long recognized.
- At a minimum, the NYT’s should get its facts straight before recommending intrusive government intervention and economic regulation of a marketplace that is very well serving wireless customers.
The Metamorphosis of Communications Competition — A New Framework
October 21, 2011
For those seeking to better understand how communications competition has evolved, expanded, and accelerated to cloud communications competition, don’t miss my new six-chart powerpoint presentation: “The Metamorphosis of Communications Competition,” here.
My bottom line conclusion: The transformation of communications competition requires a transformation in communications law.
- Specifically, the world has changed with technology, but obsolete technology-specific laws have not.
- Communications policy obsolescence undermines infrastructure’s utility and value and renders property less attractive and competitive.
I presented this new easy-to-understand framework for understanding exploding communications competition at a NetCompetition event today on Capitol Hill, which also featured excellent presentations by Jeff Eisenach, Managing Director of Navigant Economics, and Ev Ehrlich, President of ESC Company.
The Next Leg of Wireless Growth?
October 10, 2011
See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post “The Next Leg of Wireless Growth? here.
Implications of DC Circuit Hearing Net Neutrality Appeal
October 6, 2011
Since the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was selected to hear appeals of the FCC’s Open Internet Order — it is now even more likely that the FCC’s net neutrality regulations will be overturned in court as unlawful and/or unconstitutional.
- Regardless of which Appeals Court heard this case, Verizon was highly likely to win in its appeal against the FCC rules on the merits.
- Now Verizon’s chances increase further given that the most knowledgeable, expert, and experienced Circuit Court of Appeals is hearing this case.
- (See analysis here for why the FCC is highly likely to lose this case.)
The D.C. Circuit is the Appeals Court that traditionally hears cases involving independent regulatory agencies like the FCC, so the D.C. Circuit Judges are very familiar with both the limits of the FCC’s statutory authority and the FCC’s proven penchant for trying to overreach their statutory authority.
In a nutshell, the FCC’s legal case stands on two very slippery assumptions.
- First that the Appeals Court will somehow grant the FCC broad “Chevron Deference” in this case under the Supreme Court precedent that when the statutory authority is unclear, courts should defer to the expert regulatory agency, in this case the FCC.
- The problem is that a three Judge panel of this Circuit has already ruled in 2009, in Comcast vs. FCC, that the FCC does not have the statutory authority to regulate broadband or the Internet.
- The FCC tacitly fortified that critical precedent by acquiescing to that decision by not appealing it to the Supreme Court.
- Second, the FCC is largely relying on its 1996 Telecom Act Section 706 deregulatory authority to try and justify new sweeping unbounded authority over broadband and the Internet when another part of that same law said: “It is the policy of the United States… to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet… unfettered by Federal or State regulation.”
- Given this courts long experience with the 1996 Telecom Act and the FCC’s boundless regulatory ambitions, it is highly unlikely this court will allow the FCC to transmogrify an obviously de-regulatory statutory provision of law into the basis for the biggest regulatory authority land grab in the FCC’s history.
In sum, not only are the FCC’s net neutrality regulations a bad idea, based on bad legal analysis, and non-existently bad competition and cost-benefit analyses, but net neutrality proponents also continue to have very bad string of luck in losing 0-95 in the 2010 midterm elections on net neutrality and today losing 0-5 in the Court lottery in their attempt to forum shop by filing and losing in five different attempts to get the case heard anywhere but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
