USTelecom Says FCC Ignores Investment Need, Eyes BDS Regulation, 'Fake' Competition
The FCC is overlooking and even undermining broadband network investment that spurs "real" competition and improvements in business data services (BDS), USTelecom said Monday. "More regulation to promote fake competition may be coming," wrote Diane Holland, vice president-law and policy,…
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in a blog post headlined "What About Investment, Investment, Investment?" Holland said questions in a Further NPRM in docket 05-25 (see 1605030001) focus on the quantity and type of regulations needed to achieve the commission's stated objectives regarding competition, a technology-neutral framework, technology transitions and flexible regulation. "But there’s a glaring omission from that list: ensuring that providers keep investing in broadband infrastructure. Only facilities-based competition is real, sustainable competition," she wrote. Noting the FCC decision over a decade ago to focus on facilities-based competition in limiting wholesale "unbundling" discounts, Holland said the current commission had "seemingly all but abandoned increasing investment as a primary goal." She acknowledged the FNPRM mentions investment and technology transitions that implicate investment. "But the FCC’s tepid nod to increasing investment as if it would be a nicety rather than a central and essential component is alarming, and disheartening to the scores of providers that have prioritized investment over short-term profits," she wrote. Holland said "fake" competition is "built on a subsidized leasing house of cards" that is unsustainable. She said the FNPRM made "stunning prejudgments" suggestive of that course, "doubling down on accommodating competitive providers" relying on others' facilities rather than their own, which "removes incentives to invest." And she wrote the FCC finding that "best efforts" cable doesn't seems to be a competitive BDS substitute "sets the stage for finding a widespread lack of BDS competition, a necessary precursor to more regulation." She said "real competition and increased investment" are interdependent, not mutually exclusive. An FCC spokesman emailed: “The proposed framework envisions minimal regulation in markets where competition for broadband data services exists, which will preserve incentives for facilities-based investment. In markets where competition does not exist, the goal would be to ensure that businesses and institutions that rely on business data services -- including wireless providers -- can still compete and innovate, which will in fact encourage investment.”