The Political Economy of Cable - "Open Access."

Advocates of "open access" claim that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should be able to use a cable TV system's bandwidth on the same terms offered to ISPs owned by the cable system. On that view, "open access" mitigates a monopoly bottleneck and encourages the growth of broadband. This paper shows that cable operators do enjoy market power, and do seek to leverage a dominant position in video into the broadband access market by allocating too little bandwidth for Internet access. Yet, rather than protect cable operators from cannibalizing their cable TV revenue, this strategy defends against imposition of common carrier regulation, which would allow system capacity to be appropriated by regulators and rival broadband networks. Ironically, the push for "open access" limits Internet access by encouraging this under-allocation of broadband spectrum, and by introducing coordination problems slowing technology deployment. These effects are empirically evident in the competitive superiority of cable's "closed" platform vis-a-vis "open" DSL networks, and in financial market reactions to key regulatory events and mergers in broadband.

The Proposed Comcast-NBC Universal Combination: How It Might Affect the Video Market

This report discusses the proposed combination of Comcast, the largest distributor of video services in the United States, and NBC Universal (NBCU), a major producer and aggregator of video content, which would create a huge, vertically integrated entity with potentially enormous negotiating power at a time when market forces already are altering traditional content provider/distributor relationships

The Broadband Debate: A User\u27s Guide

What follows is a basic guide to the policy divisions in the broadband debate that have emerged and some suggested areas of reconciliation. For simplicity sake I divide the argument to a debate between the openists and the deregulationists. The summary is critical. I fault the openists for being too prone to favor regulation without making clear the connection between ends and means. For example, too few openists have asked the degree to which the structural open access remedies pushed by independent service providers actually promote the openists\u27 vision. Meanwhile, I fault the deregulationists two reasons. First, the deregulationists have overlooked the fact that limiting government, as they desire, sometimes requires government action. Remedies like network neutrality, for reasons I suggest, may be as important for control of government as it is of industry. I also fault the deregulationists for an exaggerated faith in industry decision-making. I suggest that some deregulationists have failed to familiarize themselves with the processes of industry decision-making before demanding deference to it. This is a particularly serious problem given an industry with a recent track record of terrible judgment and even outright fraud. One example is the demand by some deregulationists that deference is due to a so-called mart pipe vision, without analysis of whether that vision has any independent merit. The Article, finally, seeks to reconcile the two sides of the broadband debate and defends the network neutrality principle as a starting point. Deregulations and openists, while divided along many lines, share a common faith in innovation as the basis of economic growth. Both sides, in short, worship Joseph Schumpeter and his ideas of competitive, capitalistic innovation. Fidelity to this shared faith should mean mutual surrender of idealized models of either government or powerful private entities, respectively, in exchange for a shared cynicism. We should recognize that both government and the private sector have an unhappy record of blocking the new in favor of the old, and that such tendencies are likely to continue. I argue that neither deregulationists or openists should have reason to oppose Network Neutrality rules that create rights in users to use the applications or equipment of their choice. What both sides should want in an inevitable regulatory framework for broadband are rules that pre-commit both industry and government to open market entry. It must be remembered that rules creating rights in users also guarantee the right of operators to enter the application market, free of government hindrance. For these and other reasons discussed below, limited network neutrality rules should on reflection be attractive to both sides

Digital Media Battleground

Current digital media distribution platforms continue their march towards streaming service-based infrastructures, delivering content to users when and where they want it: laptops, set top boxes, home entertainment systems, and the new ubiquity: mobile devices. This model was first demonstrated by utilizing the multicast backbone technology in the early 1990s and took the better part of a decade to make inroads in changing the way individuals consume broadcast, mainstream, and syndicated video media. It took the advent of streaming technology, high-speed internet adoption, and a willingness from content owners to license their treasured content with upstart streaming media platform companies. Digital music distribution showed consumers, content owners, and distribution channels what can happen when one player effectively creates a new, disruptive technology platform, i.e. Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Now content owners are afraid of a single distributor dictating the methods, prices, and channels by which their content reaches consumers. Today, streaming technology is making a play against the incumbent iTunes transactional model of Buy, Download, and Own digital distribution by providing varies models to consumers: integrated advertising-based, subscription-based, and traditional cable “packages” with integrated on-demand streaming, all of which retain no permanence or ownership for the end user. Content owners are treading carefully, trying to avoid the single, dominant point of distribution that Apple achieved in music distribution. The results of this are less optimal from both a market standpoint and especially the experience for consumers. Media companies frequently change the terms of their licenses, or drastically increasing their licensing costs, causing radical fluctuations in the long-term viability of the nascent distribution platforms. Consumers interact with this environment through complicated, multiparty subscriptions, multiple applications or web interfaces, umpteen logins, various bills, and a nebulous understanding and ability to sit down and watch premium content when and where they want it. The entire market is in its juvenile form, stretching, growing, and trying to find that balance of monetization and the critical mass of consumer adoption required to truly transform media consumption from the real-time, over-the-air broadcast format it has been since television’s inception, to a time-shifted, choose your own, content delivery system based around the internet as the delivery medium. In this paper we idealize the situation by analyzing the largest incumbents for each of the monetization models, provide input into their strength and weaknesses and finally analyze and postulate what we believe will the trends and concerns moving forward into this new digital media panacea

Potential markets for advanced satellite communications

This report identifies trends in the volume and type of traffic offered to the U.S. domestic communications infrastructure and extrapolates these trends through the year 2011. To describe how telecommunications service providers are adapting to the identified trends, this report assesses the status, plans, and capacity of the domestic communications infrastructure. Cable, satellite, and radio components of the infrastructure are examined separately. The report also assesses the following major applications making use of the infrastructure: (1) Broadband services, including Broadband Integrated Services Digital Network (BISDN), Switched Multimegabit Data Service (SMDS), and frame relay; (2) mobile services, including voice, location, and paging; (3) Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT), including mesh VSAT; and (4) Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) for audio and video. The report associates satellite implementation of specific applications with market segments appropriate to their features and capabilities. The volume and dollar value of these market segments are estimated. For the satellite applications able to address the needs of significant market segments, the report also examines the potential of each satellite-based application to capture business from alternative technologies