WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission should be modeled after the Federal Trade Commission with a focus on competition principles and an ability to respond to abuse of market power, according to a report released Friday by the Progress & Freedom Foundation.
“In a digital era of increasingly intense competition among services and across platforms, the existing communications regulatory model based on controlling monopoly power is no longer relevant,” said PFF. “Regulation in the digital age should be based, almost exclusively, on competition-law principles drawn from antitrust law and economics.”
PFF is leading an effort to write a replacement for the Communications Act to be known as the Digital Age Communications Act. PFF released its report and draft legislative language in preparation of a public forum scheduled for Tuesday. FCC Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who is drafting his own telecommunications-reform bill, are expected to appear at the forum.
The DACA initiative is a set of five working groups dealing with spectrum policy, regulatory framework, institutional reform, universal service/social policy and the federal/state framework. The FTC proposal was presented by the regulatory framework working group.
The regulatory-framework working group departed from the FTC model in one aspect, concluding that interconnection issues-sometimes the most contentious the FCC faces-may require a different approach.
“Communications markets are network markets, where the value of the network or service can depend, often quite strongly, on the number of other consumers who are on the same network or use the same service. As a result network markets can be ‘tippy,’ such that a single service, or standard can dominate the market. In such networks, consumers can benefit greatly from interconnection of networks; but carriers may deny interconnection in order to try to win the entire market. In such circumstances, interconnection requirements can enhance total welfare,” reads the report.
