{"id":3388,"date":"2010-03-22T11:55:22","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T15:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=3388"},"modified":"2017-01-24T14:06:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T19:06:54","slug":"broadband-on-the-editorial-pages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mhgoldberg.com\/blog\/?p=3388","title":{"rendered":"Broadband on the editorial pages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting reading about broadband on the editorial pages of the major US papers this weekend.<\/p>\n

\"NY<\/a>The Sunday NY Times had an OpEd<\/a> penned by Yochai Benkler, principal author\u00a0of the largely ignored Berkman Center comparative study<\/a> of international broadband performance [as we wrote<\/a> a few weeks ago, University of Calgary’s Dean of Business observed that the study was rebutted by economists with extensive\u00a0practical experience\u00a0of telecommunications regulation]. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan had only one footnote that referred to the Berkman Center’s report. Out of all the work done by the Harvard\u00a0researchers, the only observation that appeared to merit a reference was:<\/p>\n

Some international comparisons suggest the number of retail broadband providers may be positively correlated with advertised download speeds, at least at the high end of the market, and with affordability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the FCC quickly followed up with:<\/p>\n

Others rank the United States high in affordability of broadband, despite the fact that 96% of consumers have two or fewer choices, and suggest that consumers may not be willing to pay as much for high speeds as they are for other functionality.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since the FCC report had only one reference to the Berkman study, the\u00a0OpEd\u00a0tries to cut out the middleman – selling to the public what he could not get the FCC to buy into.<\/p>\n

after eight years of intense litigation and lobbying from telephone companies, the Federal Communications Commission gave in, deciding that competition between one telephone incumbent and one cable incumbent was enough \u2014 in essence, it rejected open access as a way to create competition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Benkler misses the point. Open access is used outside of North America because in most countries, there is\u00a0nothing close to the nearly\u00a0ubiquitous intermodal competition that we have in Canada and the US. This model of “open access” won’t create the benefits of increasing competition and investment when competition already exists.<\/p>\n

No matter how many times we hear\u00a0the populist mantra of a cable and telco “monopoly,” the vast majority of North Americans already have access to choice; multiple facilities-based choices enabled over twisted pair, coax, fibre, fixed and mobile wireless, satellite. Multiple service providers offer consumers choices over many of these facilities.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0recent paper by Catherine Middleton<\/a>,\u00a0Canada Research Chair – Communication Technologies in the Information Society at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, observes that Canada has about 500 internet service providers, less than 10% of which are incumbents.\u00a0The paper discusses the problem with many open access models, with regulators manipulating the market:<\/p>\n

It is therefore no surprise that despite being considered as a \u2018\u2018second-best\u201d alternative, unbundling policies have been implemented to introduce service-based competition into broadband markets in 29 of the 30 OECD markets.<\/p>\n

However, paradoxically, service-based competition also bears the risk of actually deterring facilities-based competition and further innovation and investment in the existing single infrastructure: with the incumbent providing attractive access provisions (e.g. relatively low prices for unbundled loops), incentives for a new provider to roll out new infrastructure are diminished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Washington<\/a>Also on Sunday, the Washington Post carried an editorial<\/a> talking about the FCC’s National Broadband Plan as\u00a0being “longer on aspiration than specific policy intentions.”<\/p>\n

broadband networks have been built with billions of dollars from companies in the private sector with a legitimate right to extract profit from well-placed investments. These initiatives — and yes, the profit motive — have resulted in remarkable leaps in a few short years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Broadband service\u00a0is hardly a monopoly marketplace. And as the Post observed, “it is hard to see in this field the signs of gross market failure.”<\/p>\n

Many of the “digirati” tweeted and provided links to the NY Times piece. Virtually none\u00a0have linked to the Washington Post. Perhaps the Post’s message didn’t resonate as well with those arguing for\u00a0increased regulation of the internet, but why are they afraid of sharing it with their disciples?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting reading about broadband on the editorial pages of the major US papers this weekend. The Sunday NY Times had an OpEd penned by Yochai Benkler, principal author\u00a0of the largely ignored Berkman Center comparative study of international broadband performance [as we wrote a few weeks ago, University of Calgary’s Dean of Business observed that the …<\/p>\n

Broadband on the editorial pages<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","two_page_speed":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBroadband on the editorial pages • Telecom Trends<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Interesting reading about broadband on the editorial pages of the major US papers this weekend. 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