Thursday, June 30, 2005

FCC Regulation of Service Bundles??

The FCC has a proceeding open that, even after its Supreme Court victory in Brand X, suggests there may be some uncertainty about whether the agency will regulate one-price "bundles" of broadband and other services like voice. To read my SkyReport op-ed on this issue, click here.

posted by Kyle Dixon @ 1:30 PM | Broadband, Cable, Communications, Innovation, Internet, VoIP, Wireline

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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Broadband Post-Brand X: The Long and Winding Road

As I have stated repeatedly, the FCC needed to win the Brand X litigation to carry out its plan to minimize regulation and thereby bring consumers the benefits of investment and innovation in competing broadband networks. Based on his reaction to Monday's Supreme Court decision affirming the FCC, Chairman Martin appears to agree. But even as we (or at least some of us) celebrate Monday's decision as a victory for consumers, it is important to remember that, for the FCC, this is only a first step down a long and winding road.

Continue reading Broadband Post-Brand X: The Long and Winding Road . . .

posted by Kyle Dixon @ 3:50 PM | Broadband, Broadband, Cable, Communications, Innovation, Internet, Net Neutrality, The FCC, Wireline

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Monday, May 23, 2005

Ugh!

California legislators know better....

posted by Ray Gifford @ 7:20 PM | Communications, Wireless, Wireline

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Friday, May 6, 2005

Footnotes We Edited Out, or a Convoluted Solution to Redlining

One great use of a blog is to recycle things that you decided weren't good enough for a more formal paper. Blogs -- the refuse pile of discarded thoughts. Now, there's a great slogan.

In our Progress on Point on video services released earlier this week, Kyle and I discussed potential solutions to the "redlining" issue that cable raises against telephone company entry into the video market. But then we deleted it from the final version because it detracted from the pure principles we were trying to represent. Nonetheless, here is the notional idea for the edification of our blog readers:

[T]he Bells former and the cable companies current cries of "redlining" are based on the build out requirements requisite on their respective networks. Under the regulate down principle, the solution would be to compensate the incumbent for this implicit universal service obligation. We are not sure what the methodology would be or who the payors should be, and are certain that it should not be an ongoing payment obligation but should instead be one-time compensation for the sake of simplicity and administrability. To be sure, it would be a unseemly process fraught with ambiguity and difficulty. Under a rough justice principle, the answer may be to negotiate a one-time payment based on some rough notion (the skeptics could call it ransoming the market to continue the Stockholm Syndrome analogy) of what it owed, and for policymakers to be done with it.

Continue reading Footnotes We Edited Out, or a Convoluted Solution to Redlining . . .

posted by Ray Gifford @ 11:05 AM | Broadband, Cable, Wireline

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

After the Level 3 Petition

Level 3 has withdrawn its forbearance petition with the FCC in advance of a certain denial. The petition asked the FCC to forbear from requiring access charges on VoIP calls originating or terminating on the public switched telephone network. On balance, I favored the petition, with perhaps some time limit to keep the incentives right for more holistic intercarrier compensation reform.

A large part of my favorable inclination toward the petition is based on the belief that this "piecemeal" approach to allowing escape from the access charge regime begins to push the incentives toward broader, more complete intercarrier compensation reform. That is arguable, and it surely is arbitrage -- but arbitrage is a morally neutral activity. It can be good to rationalize markets; it can be bad if it stops beneficial price differentiation.

So, where are we now? The incentives for "holistic" intercarrier compensation reform look spotty, and the political rewards for doing so are probably negative. Nevertheless, the current system is inexorably leaking, as consumers migrate to platforms not subject to the access charge tax.

Continue reading After the Level 3 Petition . . .

posted by Ray Gifford @ 12:19 PM | Communications, The FCC, VoIP, Wireline

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Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Telecom Reform in Illinois

I had the privilege of testifying to an Illinois Senate Committee this week, on a bill that is a modest start on telecom reform. My testimony can be found here.

posted by Ray Gifford @ 10:39 PM | State Policy, Wireline

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Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Ebbers's Guilt

Bernie Ebbers conviction is rather anticlimatic coming years after the telecom bubble burst. That said, the havoc wreacked not just through MCI but the whole telecom sector by what was going on at MCI cannot be understated. It takes collective 'irrational exuberance' to make a bubble, but Ebbers's fraudulent statements went a long way toward ratifying what people wanted to believe and hence inflating the bubble.

Counter-factual history is an innocent speculative dalliance, and it is interesting to speculate what the landscape would look like had GTE ended up with MCI, rather than Worldcom. That would have forestalled the GTE-Verizon merger and made for an interesting combination and set of business incentives (particularly with the estimable and combative Bill Barr as GTE/MCI's general counsel). Alas, that was not to be, and a number of investors and good people at MCI in particular got burned by Ebbers.

In a related story, another notorious telecom bubble figure is being sued for civil fraud. That clucking sound would be chickens coming home to roost; either that, or it's the ghost of Colonel Sanders talking to me again...11 herbs and spices...mmmmm.

posted by Ray Gifford @ 2:33 PM | Wireline

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Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Cliff Clavin, Telephone Man

The Royal Post Office is re-entering the telecom market in Britain, offering a pence per minute rate that will supposedly undercut the pence per minute rate offered by British Telecom. I admit ignorance of UK telecom policy at the outset, but it would seem that phone competition there is something like UNE-P on steroids.

posted by Adam Peters @ 2:58 PM | Communications, Wireline

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