I know it’s mostly about wording and legalese, but it’s disappointing that this is where we are now.
I don’t think we should be able to redefine things that would be outside any reasonable expectation. No reasonable person would call a monopoly market a competitive one, but here we are. If they were going to change something then get rid of the competition requirement instead of changing the definition to absurdity.
Yeah, great example of this is "freedom of speech" being contorted to mean freedom of expression through any means, including spending money. Protecting other forms of self-expression by calling them "speech" is a good end by strange means. Money as speech is a unique bag of worms.
Does a customer have a choice of providers? If the answer is no, there is no competition in fact, no matter what fictitious label the FCC is allowed to apply. By this standard, a square grid, of arbitrary size, consisting of single provider zones with each zone having a side length of up to 1 mile would be, at every point, a “competitive market” even though literally no customer in the market would have a choice in providers.
If you only have one choice, how is it NOT a monopoly?
This leads to the odd result that a city could be highly ‘competitive’, in which there are always many choices within 1/2 mile... but no individual home has any choice at all.
For a business, there's always choice. There's broadband via wireless. With enough investment, dedicated wires or point-to-point wireless could be run.
It's just a matter of "not yet cheap enough". Well, if you let the price mechanism work, the juicy profits will attract other providers.
Almost no place in the world had "retail broadband" just 30 years ago. By the current ever-changing escalation of what "broadband" is, almost no place had it 20 years ago, either.
But profits in bringing it places where it didn't already exist has brought it almost everywhere. And with 2+ providers in most places.
Let prices float, and it'll keep expanding. Replace profit-seeking with price-caps and regulatory judgements, and it'll slow down, and be at the mercy of dumb sloganeering politics.
I’m not sure where you live and how it is in your area, but the majority of the country living outside a major metro has one choice for high-speed that isn’t DSL or LTE. This is also true for people renting or leasing in multi-unit buildings where the owner has chosen a provider. The last three places I lived had only one wired broadband provider.
DSL, LTE, and cable are 3 choices, and that's residential.
Business districts often have other, higher-priced choices... and for businesses where high-speed is high-value, they can always pay more for a custom set-up.
The "majority of the country" (by area) is only 20% of the population. 80% of the population lives in urban areas.
At the 10Mbps downlink threshold – enough for 2-3 separate Netflix streams – over 90% of the country has at least 2 wired choices, and wireless also keeps improving.
But it's also not-quite-right to call these situations a monopoly, except via arbitrary shifting definitions of what "broadband" is to rule out valid options.
There's always other options for internet access - probably 2 or more wireless providers, satellite downlink with slower uplinks, and, for businesses where high-bandwidth is a necessity, investing in their own wires/point-to-point links.
These are all "simply a matter of cost" – and businesses can make these cost-decisions in their own expenditures and even choices of where to locate operations.
Further, if uncontrolled prices lead to excess profits in these areas, that's exactly the mechanism to draw in competitors. Regulatory price caps mean to potential competitors, "why bother?" Excess profits instead create a juicy target for upstarts, creating the desired competition.
> I don’t think we should be able to redefine things that would be outside any reasonable expectation.
Like... 'Unlimited Internet' but with limits. Lots of limits actually. If you really want to get crazy.. dive into the rabbit hole of U.S. Legislation/Bill naming.
This is specifically related to business internet price caps, and the court said the FCC has the right to define the boundary for 'competitive' as being within 1/2 mile of a competitor.
Yes, it's not logical, and it's nonsensical, but it's not exactly as dire as the headline makes it sound, and it doesn't relate to residential broadband.
Yes it does. The precedent set by this applies to every case within the 8th Circuit, which was:
> But the FCC may rationally choose which evidence to believe among conflicting evidence in its proceedings, especially when predicting what will happen in the markets under its jurisdiction.
The FCC being able to pick which evidence to consider and which to ignore absolutely impacts residential broadband.
> The FCC being able to pick which evidence to consider and which to ignore absolutely impacts residential broadband.
Not that I agree with what was chosen here, but if multiple pieces of evidence are reviewed and they conflict in their findings, they have to choose one in their ruling, right? Technically no matter the decision, they would technically be "ignoring" evidence because the outcome didn't agree with it, correct? It's not ignored, just not believed as much as other evidence from what I gather.
You can and should consider conflicting information without ignoring anything. Generally it’s a sign of less accurate information or a poor model. Ignore information at will and you can support any conclusion.
If I read the article correctly (lots of spin, little facts), by that definition of "ignore", they didn't ignore the evidence, they disagreed compared to other evidence.
Given conflicting evidence, you have to choose which is right. That is not "ignoring" anything (hence why I put it in quotes), but sadly people use these incorrect/loaded words because they disagree with the decision.
Once a person's or organization's stated goal is to reach a specific conclusion their methods become suspect. Forcing them to specifically deal with all information is not going to change the outcome, but it does make their biases more clear.
You might not agree with the result, but it’s not “nonsensical.” The idea that whole counties are not competitive despite the presence of multiple competitors within the county presupposes that ISPs can segment markets on a block-by-block level. There is a lot of real evidence that they cannot do that in practice. For example, in the residential context, Comcast has better pricing and no data caps in markets where they compete with FiOS, even though any given household in those markets may not have access to both services.
There's also lots of evidence that they can do that. There are a number of places where people on one side of a street have access to a competitor, and thus are able to get better rates.
The FCC presented evidence that ISPS will often build up to a mile of wire reach new customers of these high-value service contracts.
> not exactly as dire as the headline makes it sound,
ArsTechnica. I can't recall the last time one of their political articles (which are the vast majority of ArsTechinca articles that ones that reach HN and Reddit frontpage) was an honest explanation of the situation covered in the article.
> The FCC presented evidence that ISPS will often build up to a mile of wire reach new customers of these high-value service contracts.
That is an extremely bold statement, and obviously both technically accurate and utterly misleading on its face.
Sure providers will build out a half mile of fiber to you. For $50k. Exceedingly few are doing a build out for a single corporate customer for free. I've been involved in build-outs where the customer simply moved offices to a lit building because the build-out costs were more expensive than eating an early termination fee on a lease.
Not sure how that is remotely competitive. It's about as close to outright lying to the court as you can get without actually doing so, in my estimation.
Ehh, I don't buy that. Being within 1/2 mile doesn't matter if you can't actually purchase service. And I can't imagine that they're going to leave this with business class internet, and not also apply it as precedent for residential internet.
They are arguing over whether the presence of a competitor within 1/2 mile counts as competition even though the competitor has not actually started service to the customer.
i.e. does the customer actually need two services? Or is the presence of another one very close by, enough to be considered as competition? (The assumption being that they would/could expand to the customer.)
Better title:
FCC can define markets with only one ISP as “competitive,”, if there is another ISP within 1/2 mile, court rules
In that case, I think the rational thing for ISP's to do is to carve out enclaves where they don't compete for customers. I suppose the new political FCC will find that competitive.
The FCC IMO is no more political than its ever been.
What we're ascribing to politics (which it may very well be) is in my opinion better ascribed to regulatory capture - which is a problem many regulatory agencies have had over time.
Regulatory capture is the engine driving contemporary politics. You buy off the party whose biases align better with your own mission, then wait for theme to have their turn at the trough.
I think this is accurate but politics swirl around it or are used as smokescreens. For example I followed Net Neutrality quite closely and it was not initially painted as partisan, until the FCC realized that by calling NN an "Obama-era regulation" they could dogwhistle some republicans over to their side and make it seem like a traditionally partisan issue. (For some reason news sites played along and used this term all over the place.) But this all happened midway through the process as they cast around for justifications for what was really regulatory capture.
Edit: I always find it interesting how when a FANG company is called out, an employee will provide a guarded defense, but when an ISP is called out regarding competition issues, the result is dead silence.
I don't think the definition is too unreasonable. Many areas would still be non-competitive according to the FTC: in order to guarantee that most of your customers are within 1/2 mile of another ISP, you'd have to significantly gerrymander your coverage areas into <2 mile wide strips. Or you'd have to ask another ISP to build in a certain fashion such that they have a bunch of isolated nodes or strips going through your large coverage area.
For reference, most of the coverage area in the map in another comment (https://imgur.com/3oUUw7b) would probably be considered non-competitive.
I think 1/2 might be a bit too far, though. 1/4 seems maybe more reasonable.
It's incredibly unreasonable. Economists roughly classify markets as monopoly (single seller), oligopoly (few, powerful sellers), and competitive markets. We are talking about a monopoly that's sort of close to being an oligopoly. A more accurate term would be "just barely not as far as possible from competitive".
I'm not saying the current state of affairs is reasonable (i.e. I'm saying that ISPs are currently monopolies). I'm saying that the FTC's proposed definition to determine whether there is competition in a coverage area is reasonable. One heuristic I'm using to support my claim is that the FTC's proposed definition implies there is still an ISP monopoly in the area in the picture I linked.
If I can't buy service from that other provider, then they don't count as competition. I can't threaten to leave my current ISP to get a better price, and you can be sure that they know that.
100% agree. If I can't get service from someone else, it doesn't matter if it's 1/2 mile or 100 miles away - there is no competition.
Even if there is "someone else" that may not be enough. It the "alternative" cannot support video (such as YouTube and Netflix), or can't upload my data at a reasonable speed, it isn't really a competitor.
> If I can't buy service from that other provider, then they don't count as competition.
Right. Businesses are often currently wired for only one ISP. And the question is: "Can I buy future service from the other guy?"
It's a fuzzy question, because you can essentially always buy service...for some amount of money.
The evidence presented (and deemed credible by the court) is that ISPs will frequently build connections for businesses up to one mile away. And most of the businesses in question were less than half a mile away. And so the court ruled that the FCC could choose to call the market competitive, based on that evidence.
It's an unsatisfyingly fuzzy question, with perhaps an equally unsatisfying answer.
It's pretty standard practice for competition regulators around the world to think about whether new competitors could enter a market. As it ought to be, since that is a real check on the behaviour of the incumbent.
Now this might apply poorly to ISPs where there are all kinds of frictions and potential barriers to entry, so maybe the regulator is getting this one wrong. But the court decided not to wade into an argument that is more about economics than law.
We could have laws where there was less regulatory discretion. But they would need to be written differently, and as a society we would have to just accept that they will sometimes throw up absurd results in corner-cases.
Actually, the decision per se isn't even about that. It's about whether the FCC, being the regulatory body responsible for this stuff, is able to decide for itself whether or not a "nearby" service provider counts as "competition" in an abstract sense.
The court held, basically, that the FCC's decision is reasonable enough to fit within its congressionally-mandaded charter, so making the decision is none of the legal system's business. If you don't like it vote in an administration which will staff the FCC with people who agree with you.
Truth. Really, I have to sympathize with the court on this, they're basically saying "The FCC knows more about communications technology and the economics associated with it than a judge does", which is undoubtedly true. Deciding this sort of thing is what the FCC is for. That doesn't mean they got it right, but short of creating a communication-technology centered appeals court, that's what we've got. The FCC is the correct (currently existing) government institution to be making that kind of decision. Just because they (arguably) made the wrong decision here, doesn't mean it makes sense to have appeals court judges deciding this, as the technology and economic background required to make that decision is not part of their training, nor something they could acquire in the course of a court case.
New business idea! Become Comcast’s or Verizon’s Sock Puppet “ISP” who does nothing but “exist 1/2 mike away from people” so they can claim there’s competition. I can do that without leaving my house and wearing only a bathrobe.
Thanks to the Eighth Circuit for this "business-friendly" decision which is friendly to a handful of mammoth telecoms and unfriendly to all other businesses.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI don’t think we should be able to redefine things that would be outside any reasonable expectation. No reasonable person would call a monopoly market a competitive one, but here we are. If they were going to change something then get rid of the competition requirement instead of changing the definition to absurdity.
1/2 a mile is pretty close - I don't see how you can call that a monopoly.
This leads to the odd result that a city could be highly ‘competitive’, in which there are always many choices within 1/2 mile... but no individual home has any choice at all.
A perfectly competitive monopolistic oligopoly.
It's just a matter of "not yet cheap enough". Well, if you let the price mechanism work, the juicy profits will attract other providers.
Almost no place in the world had "retail broadband" just 30 years ago. By the current ever-changing escalation of what "broadband" is, almost no place had it 20 years ago, either.
But profits in bringing it places where it didn't already exist has brought it almost everywhere. And with 2+ providers in most places.
Let prices float, and it'll keep expanding. Replace profit-seeking with price-caps and regulatory judgements, and it'll slow down, and be at the mercy of dumb sloganeering politics.
Business districts often have other, higher-priced choices... and for businesses where high-speed is high-value, they can always pay more for a custom set-up.
The "majority of the country" (by area) is only 20% of the population. 80% of the population lives in urban areas.
At the 10Mbps downlink threshold – enough for 2-3 separate Netflix streams – over 90% of the country has at least 2 wired choices, and wireless also keeps improving.
There's always other options for internet access - probably 2 or more wireless providers, satellite downlink with slower uplinks, and, for businesses where high-bandwidth is a necessity, investing in their own wires/point-to-point links.
These are all "simply a matter of cost" – and businesses can make these cost-decisions in their own expenditures and even choices of where to locate operations.
Further, if uncontrolled prices lead to excess profits in these areas, that's exactly the mechanism to draw in competitors. Regulatory price caps mean to potential competitors, "why bother?" Excess profits instead create a juicy target for upstarts, creating the desired competition.
Like... 'Unlimited Internet' but with limits. Lots of limits actually. If you really want to get crazy.. dive into the rabbit hole of U.S. Legislation/Bill naming.
Yes, it's not logical, and it's nonsensical, but it's not exactly as dire as the headline makes it sound, and it doesn't relate to residential broadband.
Yes it does. The precedent set by this applies to every case within the 8th Circuit, which was:
> But the FCC may rationally choose which evidence to believe among conflicting evidence in its proceedings, especially when predicting what will happen in the markets under its jurisdiction.
The FCC being able to pick which evidence to consider and which to ignore absolutely impacts residential broadband.
Not that I agree with what was chosen here, but if multiple pieces of evidence are reviewed and they conflict in their findings, they have to choose one in their ruling, right? Technically no matter the decision, they would technically be "ignoring" evidence because the outcome didn't agree with it, correct? It's not ignored, just not believed as much as other evidence from what I gather.
Given conflicting evidence, you have to choose which is right. That is not "ignoring" anything (hence why I put it in quotes), but sadly people use these incorrect/loaded words because they disagree with the decision.
The FCC presented evidence that ISPS will often build up to a mile of wire reach new customers of these high-value service contracts.
> not exactly as dire as the headline makes it sound,
ArsTechnica. I can't recall the last time one of their political articles (which are the vast majority of ArsTechinca articles that ones that reach HN and Reddit frontpage) was an honest explanation of the situation covered in the article.
That is an extremely bold statement, and obviously both technically accurate and utterly misleading on its face.
Sure providers will build out a half mile of fiber to you. For $50k. Exceedingly few are doing a build out for a single corporate customer for free. I've been involved in build-outs where the customer simply moved offices to a lit building because the build-out costs were more expensive than eating an early termination fee on a lease.
Not sure how that is remotely competitive. It's about as close to outright lying to the court as you can get without actually doing so, in my estimation.
They are arguing over whether the presence of a competitor within 1/2 mile counts as competition even though the competitor has not actually started service to the customer.
i.e. does the customer actually need two services? Or is the presence of another one very close by, enough to be considered as competition? (The assumption being that they would/could expand to the customer.)
Better title:
FCC can define markets with only one ISP as “competitive,”, if there is another ISP within 1/2 mile, court rules
What we're ascribing to politics (which it may very well be) is in my opinion better ascribed to regulatory capture - which is a problem many regulatory agencies have had over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
https://i.imgur.com/3oUUw7b.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_allocation_scheme
Edit: I always find it interesting how when a FANG company is called out, an employee will provide a guarded defense, but when an ISP is called out regarding competition issues, the result is dead silence.
For reference, most of the coverage area in the map in another comment (https://imgur.com/3oUUw7b) would probably be considered non-competitive.
I think 1/2 might be a bit too far, though. 1/4 seems maybe more reasonable.
Even if there is "someone else" that may not be enough. It the "alternative" cannot support video (such as YouTube and Netflix), or can't upload my data at a reasonable speed, it isn't really a competitor.
If it is, the incumbent will be more restrained in their prices, to avoid inducing the competitor to enter that market.
That's basically the crux of the matter, and the judge rules both ways of looking at things are reasonable since no one knows the future.
It's realistic to imagine a competitor could expand, but it's a far cry from actual competition.
These half-mile ranges shouldn't be lumped in with locations that have choices.
Right. Businesses are often currently wired for only one ISP. And the question is: "Can I buy future service from the other guy?"
It's a fuzzy question, because you can essentially always buy service...for some amount of money.
The evidence presented (and deemed credible by the court) is that ISPs will frequently build connections for businesses up to one mile away. And most of the businesses in question were less than half a mile away. And so the court ruled that the FCC could choose to call the market competitive, based on that evidence.
It's an unsatisfyingly fuzzy question, with perhaps an equally unsatisfying answer.
Now this might apply poorly to ISPs where there are all kinds of frictions and potential barriers to entry, so maybe the regulator is getting this one wrong. But the court decided not to wade into an argument that is more about economics than law.
We could have laws where there was less regulatory discretion. But they would need to be written differently, and as a society we would have to just accept that they will sometimes throw up absurd results in corner-cases.
The court held, basically, that the FCC's decision is reasonable enough to fit within its congressionally-mandaded charter, so making the decision is none of the legal system's business. If you don't like it vote in an administration which will staff the FCC with people who agree with you.
How do you plan to install those wires without leaving your house?
Also, 1/2 mile distance covers about three quarter of a square mile.