FEDERAL ECONOMISTS WARN AGAINST SIMPLE DEFINITIONS OF BROADBAND MARKET

摘要

A senior Department of Justice economist warned against using hard definitions of broadband and competitive markets. Speaking at an FCC staff workshop on market power and competition, Carl Shapiro, the Antitrust Division's chief economist, said regulators naturally want to ask whether a market is competitive, but the question may not apply well to broadband. A top Federal Trade Commission economist offered similar advice. The FCC naturally wants to "define the market" and "define what broadband is," and there's a tendency to rely on the Justice Department's horizontal merger guidelines, Shapiro said. "I would just issue a preliminary warning against doing that," he said. "In this area, where there's new technology coming, and potentially, we hope, additional competition from wireless, the question in terms of exclusionary conduct ... is whether it would prevent the prices from falling."