broadband policy, FCC Research Papers (original) (raw)

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The strict relation between broadband development and economic growth and its central importance in modern economies is nowadays a demonstrated fact. Cheap and ubiquitous high-speed internet access promises to accelerate economic growth,... more

The strict relation between broadband development and economic growth and its central importance in modern economies is nowadays a demonstrated fact. Cheap and ubiquitous high-speed internet access promises to accelerate economic growth, to create new jobs and industries, to advance education and lifelong learning, to improve health care decision making, and to raise living standards; conversely, foregone broadband access imposes high economic and social costs.
In the global competition context, the U.S. and Europe have used different methods to reach the level of broadband efficiency and diffusion already existing in the Asian countries. In fact, while on one hand the US followed a deregulatory approach directed to improve infrastructure-based competition, this even with the support of private investments, on the other hand, the European Sate aid regulation tried to channel public resources with the aim to ensure service-based competition and – consequently – to improve consumers’ welfare.
In this picture, the article will analyse the European State aid policy in the broadband field – specified in the Guidelines published in 2014 – and the U.S. recent policy trends for the diffusion and implementation of broadband. As result of the compared analysis, a slow convergence of the two policies will appear, even confirmed by the Federal Communication Commission approach, now recognizing the importance of effective broadband affordability and showing, at the same time, the intention to improve service-based competition through supporting programs and a new central role for local municipalities. Given the above, according to the author’s view, the European experience in State aid policy would now provide useful e analytical tools to the American policymakers, actually engaged with the attempt to lower prices and to improve service-based competition in the American broadband market.

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  • Competition Policy, IT law, Competition, European Union Law, Competition Law, International Trade Law
• • by Russell Newman
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  • Broadband, broadband policy, FCC, Network Neutrality

Discussions about network neutrality largely have been divorced from network neutrality’s connections to neoliberalism. This article seeks to rectify this, performing three tasks. First, it resituates the history of network neutrality as... more

Discussions about network neutrality largely have been divorced from network neutrality’s connections to neoliberalism. This article seeks to rectify this, performing three tasks. First, it resituates the history of network neutrality as a concept within the development of what economic historians as Philip Mirowski have termed a neoliberal thought collective. Second, it speaks to the particularly neoliberal form of activist organization that was required to secure the Federal Communications Commission’s reversal of a decade-plus of policy. Last, I offer a brief outline of the cultural labor the network neutrality debate performed as a consequence of the way it was historically justified. Network neutrality is, perversely, a site of neoliberalism’s construction. Media activism going forward must deal with the ambivalences this produces.

• • by Russell Newman
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  • Neoliberalism, Media Reform, broadband policy, FCC, Network Neutrality
• • by Dorothy Kidd
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  • Media Activism, Communication History, History of Media Technology, broadband policy, FCC