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...

The United States has recently reinvigorated its efforts to promote ubiquitous broadband at affordable prices for all Americans by both committing over $7.2 billion in stimulus funds and by requiring the Federal Communications Commission to issue a “National Broadband Plan.” The big policy...

We explore the question of whether wireless industry mergers invariably reduce sector employment and find the answer is "no." We reach this conclusion by looking at four years of data on employment trends surrounding the largest wireless merger to date - the AT&T-Cingular merger in 2004, and two...

With a sluggish economy, high unemployment, and unprecedented deficit spending, growing the economy and curbing federal spending are top priorities in Washington. A now-popular target for reform is regulation, which even President Obama claims to have "stifled innovation" and to have had "a...

In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of government spending on private-sector job growth. Rather than contemplate the average or typical effect of government stimulus on private-sector jobs, we divide the past fifty years of U.S. economic history into low-growth and high-growth periods....

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...

With the National Broadband Plan's promise of an additional 500 MHz of spectrum for commercial purposes, the question of how to allocate those resources among competing uses and users will dominate the communications policy debate over the coming years. In this policy paper, we provide a...

The issue of whether the government should assign the D Block of spectrum to public safety or auction the spectrum for commercial use requires an assessment of the relative benefits and costs of these two alternatives. We propose such a framework, and preliminary analysis suggests that the 10...