It’s the New Year – a time when we take stock of last year’s events. Below is my list of the top ten communications decisions of 2010. Like last year, these aren’t presented in order of significance.
1. Net Neutrality (a/k/a “Open Internet”)
This was the big one in 2010. The FCC delivered a late December Christmas present to broadband providers by imposing net neutrality obligations. Among other things, the order signaled that this FCC does not believe market analysis is necessary to impose significant regulation – regulation that will affect the very markets the FCC declined to analyze. This is a major departure from Congressional direction and FCC practice for nearly two decades. The FCC’s willingness to regulate without evidence of market failure represents a major triumph for public interest groups, who have long argued that market failure is not a prerequisite to regulation.
2. “Bill Shock”
Another NPRM makes the list. The FCC is proposing rules that would require mobile service providers to provide usage alerts and information intended to assist consumers in avoiding unexpected charges on their bills. Like the net neutrality order, the FCC doesn’t do any market analysis here, because this FCC doesn’t believe competition is sufficient to protect consumers. (If the FCC keeps this up, there are going to be a lot of economists out of work.)
3. SkyTerra (a/k/a LightSquared)
A trio of Bureaus granted the transfer of SkyTerra’s MSS license, including its ancillary terrestrial component authority, to Harbinger Capital. As I noted in a previous post addressing this order at length, the Bureau trio decided to accept ostensibly voluntary conditions related to Harbinger’s plans to implement a terrestrial LTE network without assessing the state of terrestrial competition. As noted above, this is part of a trend at this FCC of ignoring market analysis. Perhaps more importantly, this order paved the way for Harbinger to deploy a massive terrestrial network using un-auctioned (i.e., free) satellite spectrum. It turns out that cellular providers were right back in 2003 when they argued that ancillary terrestrial component would ultimately become ancillary satellite component. Read the rest of this entry »