Under Section 629 of the Communications Act, Congress directed the FCC to adopt regulations to promote a retail market for set-top boxes. The Commission's first attempt was the ill-fated CableCard experiment, which - by the Commission's own admission - was a dismal failure. In response, the...

In this paper, we disprove claims by proponents of increased Internet regulation that Broadband Service Providers (“BSPs”) - such as AT&T, Verizon, Sprint-Nextel, Qwest, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable - make “record profits,” “substantial profits,” and “soaring profits.” By...

In this Perspective, I review arguments that broadband providers may be anticompetitively imposing usage-based pricing to protect their profits from “core” services (e.g., voice, video, texting) against the proliferation of “over the top” services and, as such, new price regulation of...

One important concern for the upcoming and highly-complex voluntary incentive auctions for broadcast television spectrum is the degree to which the largest mobile wireless providers will be allowed to participate. Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice encouraged the Federal Communications...

Market definition is an essential ingredient to competitive and regulatory analysis. Yet, there is significant disparity regarding the definition of the relevant geographic market for high-capacity circuits, commonly referred to as Special Access services. Given the present debate over expanding...

In this Paper, we assess the performance and efficiency of OECD countries with respect to broadband Internet subscription. Using the econometric technique of Stochastic Frontier Analysis, we estimate scores indicating the efficiency with which a country converts its economic and demographic...

The extent to which broadband Internet service providers can engage in reasonable traffic management when faced with potentially congestion-causing applications like BitTorrent or other file-sharing applications is currently the subject of heated debate. This Paper provides a formal economic...

The purpose of this Policy Paper is to examine empirically the relative impact that a regulatory mandate like network neutrality would have on high-cost areas and to compare that relative burden to lower-cost urban areas. We find areas that are, on average, high-cost could be disproportionately...

The Bell Operating Companies (quot;BOCsquot;) argue that Total Element Long Run Incremental Cost (TELRIC) prices set by State public service commissions have no nexus to the BOCs' actual forward-looking costs but are, instead, based on retail prices with the goal of ensuring that competitors...