Competition in the Digital Age
AT&T and Time Warner want to merge. They don't really operate in the same market -- AT&T is a distributor (specifically through wireless and Direct TV) while Time Warner has content -- notably HBO, CNN and its Warner movie releases. The DOJ have a straightforward vertical merger concern: that the new entity will use its …
Continue reading "Two key assumptions in the DOJ challenge to AT&T and Time Warner"
It has long been recognized that networked services contain weak-link vulnerabilities. That is, the performance of any frontier device depends on the performance of every contributing component and service. This column focuses on one such phenomenon, which goes by the label “congestion.” No, this is not a new type of allergy, but, as with a …
Do you teach Internet economics? Do you teach Internet strategy to business students? Looking for cases to expose students to the latest issues in data markets? This post include some quick (and shameless) publicity for a few cases you might find useful. One is about the fight between Netflix and broadband ISPs. Another is about …
Continue reading "Teaching about data carrier economics? A few cases to help."
Short answer: it isn’t obvious that it can. Let me back up a second and explain why I am revisiting this issue again. Tim Harford published an article a few days ago that took his masterful econsplaining skills to the issue of net neutrality. But in providing his characteristically clear exposition, he crystallised where many …
As Internet service providers – both wired and wireless – continue to lose ground in the net neutrality debate, they have retreated to engineering requirements rather than economic arguments. Where previously it was all about incentives to invest in infrastructure – arguments that don’t hold up by the way – or the sufficiency of competition – for which …
Continue reading "Net neutrality should apply to mobile networks"
Last night, BlackBerry CEO John Chen penned a blog post on net neutrality. He was in favor of net neutrality but in the last half of his post introduced a whole new notion of neutrality: “Application Neutrality” or app neutrality for short. Suffice it to say, the Internet decided this was crazy. And, I’m going …
For the last few weeks I have been working on a paper out of the notes I posted on weak and strong net neutrality. The paper is now done (at least as a working paper) and it seems appropriate to summarise its main findings as some were unexpected. The first finding is one that I had …
Continue reading "Net neutrality may be harder to achieve than we thought"
The recent interest in Net Neutrality has been spurred on by Netflix's fight with Comcast for a fast lane. The issue of whether a lack of access to a fast lane might stifle innovation is a big one (see here for an impassioned plea) but what I wanted to consider today was the more basic …
Tim B. Lee has been writing an excellent series of posts on Net Neutrality at Vox. See here, here and here. The picture painted is of the structure of the previously decentralised internet in the US being a mess and one where those with some degree of power (in this case afforded by size) are …
Continue reading "A thousand cuts and the last mile problem"
Until recently, a fast lane from a broadband ISP was a remote possibility in the US. ISPs had to give data equal treatment, regardless of the source, and could not offer faster delivery for a higher price while giving slower service as a default. Although fast lanes were allowed by regulators a few years ago …
Digitopoly 