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...

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 creation of a growing number of agencies at the EU level is one of the most significant developments in the administrative structure of the EU. These agencies play a useful role as they allow the Commission to decentralize a number of scientific, technical, or observatory functions to...

Once again the issue of a plebiscite for the independence of Scotland is being discussed. The likely effects of independence on the telecommunications sector have previously been analysed, but need both to be reconsidered and to be subjected to debate and parliamentary scrutiny. Necessarily, it...

Politicians connected to elites who anticipated benefiting from the 1866 Post Roads Act overcame the problem of collective action and passed pro-consumer legislation over the objections of a concentrated economic interest. Mancur Olson's (1965, 1982) theory on the cost of collective action...

The United States federal government preempted anti-competitive state and municipal telegraph regulations when the 1866 Post Roads Act was enacted. The act granted a de facto national franchise to build and operate a telegraph system anywhere in the United States to any telegraph company...

Over the past twenty years we have seen the emergence of an important phenomenon in the practice of modern regulation — cooperative bargaining between the regulator and the regulated over a “bundle” of seemingly unrelated issues. Because of the multiplicity of issues being adjudicated...

When the Internet was in its nascency, the Federal Communications Commission rejected calls to impose traditional "common carrier" regulation designed for a monopoly telephone world. Instead, the agency classified broadband Internet access as an "information service" under Title I of the...

We evaluate the impact of a major European state aid programme for broadband deployment applied to rural areas in the German state of Bavaria in the years 2010 and 2011. Using matched difference-in-differences estimation strategies, we find that aided municipalities have – depending on...