The FCC’s continuing refusal to determine that the U.S. wireless...
The FCC’s continuing refusal to determine that the U.S. wireless market is effectively competitive contravenes the Communications Act (CD March 25 p7), Phoenix Center economist George Ford said Monday in a blog post. “Considering the response to earlier reports, I…
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expect that many will be dismayed by the agency’s failure to make findings, particularly as to whether the U.S. wireless industry is ‘effectively competitive,'” Ford wrote (http://bit.ly/YPGAtI). “After all, Section 331(c)(1)(C) requires the agency to perform ‘an analysis of whether or not there is effective competition,’ and a failure to do so seems to be in direct contradiction to the statute.” Some FCC critics want the FCC to conclude “that because some observed factor X is above or below some arbitrarily defined critical level, the market is or is not effectively competitive,” he said. But the report also, correctly, rejects that approach, he said. “Put simply, the Commission concludes that ‘concentration’ bears no direct relationship with ‘competition,'” he said. “This conclusion is profoundly significant and absolutely legitimate.”