Telecom

by publius I was happy to see that, after approximately 50 years of regulatory review, the Sirius-XM merger finally got approved. It was a little absurd, frankly, that it was even controversial. Just call me Grover Norquist on this one. The strongest objection to the merger — raised primarily by broadcasters (more on them in … Read more

by publius Kevin Drum writes that the era of flat-rate broadband pricing may be over because of infrastructural limitations. But this part isn’t quite right: The enormous boom in long-haul fiber construction in the late 90s, followed by the dotcom bust, left us with so much overcapacity that for the past decade there’s been no … Read more

by publius So the big 700 MHz spectrum auction is over, and the big boys won big. I’ll have much more to say later, but Verizon and AT&T won almost everything. The total auction netted about $19 billion, with roughly $16 billion from Verizon and AT&T. If anything, though, these figures understate the companies’ dominance. … Read more

by publius Late last year, the FCC invited a new round of comments on net neutrality (and broadband access competition more generally). Somewhat strangely, NBC jumped into the fray, arguing that network providers should be required to monitor their networks for digital copyright violations. Somewhat less strangely, AT&T representatives at a big industry forum this … Read more

by publius As the NYT reports, big things afoot at the FCC. In particular, Chairman Martin seems poised to pass a number of regulations aimed at cable companies to increase video competition. The new regulations would, among other things, cap the size of cable companies, increase competitors’ access to programming, and require providers to offer … Read more