Are Cable Companies a Broadband Monopoly?

One of the products my consulting firm offers are statistically valid surveys, and conducting surveys has let us get a close look in many communities at the mix between cable broadband and telco DSL. In the last few years, the percentage of DSL subscribers in towns with a good cable company network has plummeted.

It’s not unusual to see DSL market penetration in bigger towns of 10% or less, meaning in most cases that the cable company has essentially won the competitive battle. In most of these towns, we rarely see many DSL customers getting speeds faster than 15 Mbps on the DSL connection, and often a lot less.

We still occasionally see a town with a higher DSL penetration, often due to a telco like AT&T that upgraded the market to offer 50 Mbps DSL that uses two copper lines. But even in these markets, the cable companies have won most of the customers.

The primary reason we see people keeping DSL is price. We often find people paying $35 to $45 for a DSL connection who can’t or won’t upgrade to a more expensive cable modem connection. Many of these folks will hang on to the low-price connection until the day when the telco inevitably retires the telephone copper.

It’s obvious to me that the cable companies are already monopolies in most markets. Any company in any other sector that captured 85% to 95% market share would be deemed a monopoly. I think the cable companies now meet the simple market share test.

Another way to identify monopolies is by noting examples of monopoly behavior. Economists have created a list of changes that are typical monopoly behavior. For example:

  • Price Gouging. Monopolies raise prices over time when there are no competitors to keep them in check. Wall Street has been encouraging the big cable companies to aggressively raise broadband prices. All of the big ISPs have started the process of annually raising rates.
  • Poor Service. Customer service tends to worsen from monopolies because they have no incentive to do better. The big ISPs were already rated as being the worst among all industries at customer service, and there is no reason to think it will ever get any better.
  • Monopsony Power. This term refers to the tendency of monopolies to exploit their purchasing power by forcing low prices on their supply chain. Perhaps the best example of this is Comcast swallowing up the programmers that supply cable TV content.

The reason it’s important to always refer to the big cable companies as monopolies is that we have laws that can kick-in to curb monopoly abuses. However, it likely takes widespread recognition that the cable companies are monopolies to have any hope of awakening monopoly remedies.

The government has a wide range of possible ways to regulate and/or curb monopoly abuses:

  • Governments can fund or support competitors. In this country that likely means having grant programs to support those who would build networks to compete against the cable companies. There are no grants I know of that will fund a competitor to a cable HFC network.
  • The remedy that monopolies hate the most is price regulation. We don’t have to harken back very far into the past to a time when the FCC enforced price regulations over cable companies.
  • One of the most natural ways to regulate monopolies is to enforce some kind of rate of return regulation. Capping monopoly profits will hold down rates.
  • Both the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission have the authority to fine companies for monopoly abuses. These companies are so large that it’s hard to hurt them through penalties, but it is an arrow in the regulatory quiver.
  • Another interesting solution is divestiture – like was imposed on AT&T in 1984. Companies like Comcast are now conglomerations of multiple businesses including broadband networks, entertainment and content creation, and side businesses like cellular, smart home, and numerous other sidelines. Breaking these giant companies into pieces has some merit.

The FCC has gone out of its way to declare that it no longer has any authority over broadband, and thus little or no control over the big cable companies. But this could be changed quickly by by changing the law, and a new Telecom Act could push the FCC back into its original role as a broadband regulator. If the monopoly abuses grow too great, this can also end up at the Justice Department, which had a major role in the divestiture of AT&T.

The Consequences of No Broadband Regulation

A few weeks ago when the COVID-19 pandemic became apparent we saw the ridiculous spectacle of an FCC chairman begging ISPs to not disconnect customers during a pandemic that would likely throw tens of millions of people out of work. Chairman Pai was reduced to begging because a few years earlier he had voted to strip the FCC if its power to regulate broadband. Before that decision, Chairman Pai could simply have ordered ISPs to be on their best behavior during the pandemic.

This is the most recent demonstrations of the negative impact of deregulating an industry that is controlled by a tiny handful of carriers. In most urban markets the big cable companies have become de facto monopolies – and even most markets that haven’t quite reached monopoly status are, at best, duopolies. There is little broadband competition in most major metropolitan areas, and even in many rural county seats.

It’s not hard to see that the ISP industry thinks it’s bullet-proof against regulation. Consider what’s happened with prices in just the past few years:

  • When comparing data prices around the world, the US has the highest data rates among industrialized countries. Our cellular data prices are nearly the highest anywhere in the world other than a few remote places like Antarctica and war zones.
  • All the major ISPs have raised broadband rates in the last year – when everybody in the industry knows that broadband is already a product with huge margins. These rate increases serve no other purpose other than padding the bottom line. What’s worse is that Wall Street analysts are pushing the ISPs to raise rates much higher.
    • ISP bills are now full of hidden fees. Consumer Reports said last year that the average monthly company-imposed fees for the bills they analyzed averaged to $22.96 for AT&T U-verse, $31.28 for Charter, $39.59 for Comcast, $40.16 for Cox, and $43.79 for Verizon FiOS. They estimate that these fees could total to at least $28 billion per year nationwide.
  • Some ISPs like AT&T, Comcast, Cox, and Mediacom are making big money on data caps. It’s clear that the argument of having data caps to protect networks against overuse has zero basis in fact. Data caps are just a quiet way to raise rates and billings. We now know that over 8% of homes now use over a terabyte of data per month – and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • ISPs feel brave to openly gouge customers, like Frontier that is billing a monthly fee for WiFi modems that the customers purchased. Even when challenged publicly, the company won’t remove the charges because they don’t fear regulatory retribution.

One of the worst things about the deregulation of broadband is that the average consumer has no idea this happened. The FCC was slick enough to bury the deregulation of broadband in the net neutrality topic. Most people don’t realize that when the FCC killed net neutrality that they also gave away their authority to regulate broadband. People still look to the FCC to correct broadband injustices, without realizing that when they file an FCC complaint against a broadband provider that the agency is powerless to intercede on their behalf.

The FCC will argue that they didn’t kill broadband regulation, but they instead handed the responsibility to the Federal Trade Commission. That claim falls apart quickly once you realize that the FTC has zero authority to regulate industries – they can’t write a rule that applies to all ISPs. The FTC’s power is limited to fining ISPs that have blatantly injured the public – and this must be done by an agency that is also overlooking all other US corporations.

Other than to dole out spectrum for 5G, it’s hard to even justify the FCC any longer. If the US isn’t going to regulate one of the most important industries in the country – many would say during the current pandemic the most important – then perhaps we ought to stop pretending to do so.

Only Congress can fix the problem and they’ve shown no inclination to do so. Congress hasn’t done anything meaningful concerning broadband since the 1996 Telecommunications Act that was signed just as people were subscribing to AOL and Compuserve.

The FCC should be taking drastic action during this pandemic. The agency could have been leading the charge looking for ways to get broadband to kids stuck at home. They could have been taking actions to make it easier for telemedicine in the last few months. They could have reacted to the pandemic with plans to finally solve the broadband gap. Instead, all we got was a powerless FCC Chairman politely asking ISPs to not harm people during a national emergency.

The Problem with FTC Regulation

As part of the decision to kill Title II regulation, the FCC largely ceded its regulatory authority over broadband to the Federal Trade Commission. FTC regulation is exceedingly weak, meaning that broadband is largely unregulated.

A great example of this is the recent $60 million fine levied on AT&T by the FTC. This case stretched back to 2014 when the company advertised and charged a premium price for an unlimited cellular data plan. It turns out the plan was far from unlimited and once a customer reached an arbitrary amount of monthly usage, AT&T throttled download speeds to the point where the broadband was largely unusable.

This is clearly an unfair consumer practice and the FTC should be applauded for fining AT&T. Unfortunately, the authority to levy fine for bad behavior is the practical extent of the FTC’s regulatory authority.

A strong regulator would not have taken five years to resolve this issue. In today’s world, five years is forever, and AT&T has moved far past the network, the products, and the practices they used in 2014. In 2014 most of the cellular network was still 3G, moving towards 4G. It didn’t take a lot of cellular data usage to stress the network. It was a real crisis for the cellular networks when people started watching video on their phones, and the cellular companies tamped down on usage by enforcing small monthly data caps, and apparently by capping unlimited users as well.

A strong regulator would have ordered AT&T to stop the bad practice in 2014. The FTC doesn’t have that authority. The regulatory process at the FTC is to bring suit against a corporation for bad behavior. Often companies will stop bad behavior immediately to soften the size of potential fines – but they are not required to do so. The FTC suit is like any other lawsuit with discovery and testimony. Once the FTC finds the corporation guilty of bad behavior, the parties often negotiate a settlement, and it’s routine for corporations to  agrees to never undertake the same bad practices again.

A strong regulator would have ordered the whole cellular industry to stop throttling unlimited data customers. The FCC fine applied strictly to AT&T and not to any other cellular carriers. T-Mobile has advertised unlimited data plans for years that get throttled at some point, but this FTC action and the fine against AT&T has no impact on T-Mobile and the other wireless carriers. AT&T got their wrist slapped, but the FTC doesn’t have the authority to tell other cellular companies to not engage in the same bad behavior. The FCC regulates by punishing bad corporate actors and hopes that similar companies will modify their behavior.

A strong regulator would develop forward-thinking policies to head off bad behavior before it happens. One of the bulwarks of regulation is establishing policies that prohibit bad behavior and that reward corporations for good behavior. The FTC has no authority to create policy – only to police bad behavior.

Even if they wanted to regulate broadband more, the FTC doesn’t have the staffing needed to monitor all broadband companies. The agency is responsible for policing bad corporate behavior across all industries, so they only tackle the worst cases of corporate abuse, and more often than not they go after the largest corporations.

At some point, Congress will have to re-regulate broadband. Unregulated corporations inevitably abuse the public. Without regulation, broadband prices are going to go sky-high. Without regulation there will be ISP policies that unfairly punish customers. Without regulation the big ISPs will eventually engage in all of the practices that net neutrality tried to stop. Having the FTC occasionally levy a big fine against a few big ISPs will not deter bad behavior across the whole ISP sector.

What we really need is an FCC that does what it’s supposed to do. If the FCC refused to regulate broadband – the primary product under its umbrella – then the agency is reduced to babysitting spectrum auctions, and not much else of consequence.

A Corporate Call for Privacy Legislation











Killing FTC Regulation?

NCTA, the lobbying group for the big cable companies filed a pleading with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to not get involved with regulating the broadband industry. When the FCC killed net neutrality, Chairman Ajit Pai promised that it was okay for the FCC to step away from broadband regulation since the FTC was going to take over much of the regulatory role. Now, a month after net neutrality went into effect we have the big cable ISPs arguing that the FTC should have a limited role in regulation broadband. The NTCA comments were filed in a docket that asks how the FTC should handle the regulatory role handed to them by the FCC.

Pai’s claim was weak from the outset because of the nature of the way that the FTC regulates. They basically pursue corporations of all kinds that violate federal trade rules or who abuse the general public. For example, the FTC went after AT&T for throttling customers who had purchased unlimited data plans. However, FTC rulings don’t carry the same weight as FCC orders. Rulings are specific to the company under investigation. Rulings might lead other companies to modify their behavior, but an FTC order doesn’t create a legal precedent that automatically applies to all carriers. In contrast, FCC rulings can be made to apply to the whole industry and rulings can change the regulations for every ISP.

The NCTA petition asks the FTC to not pursue complaints about regulatory complaints against ISPs. For example, they argue that the agency shouldn’t be singling out ISPs for unique regulatory burdens, but should instead pursue the large Internet providers like Facebook and Google. The NCTA claims that market forces will prevent bad behavior by ISP and will punish a carrier that abuses its customers. They claim there is sufficient competition for cable broadband, such as from DSL, that customers will leave an ISP that is behaving poorly. In a world where they have demolished DSL and where cable is a virtual monopoly in most markets they really made that argument! We have a long history in the industry that says otherwise, and even when regulated by the FCC there are long laundry lists of ways that carriers have mistreated their customers.

One of the more interesting requests is that the ISPs want the FTC to preempt state and local rules that try to regulate them. I am sure this is due to vigorous activity at the state level currently to create rules for net neutrality and privacy regulations. They want the FTC to issue guidelines to state Attorney Generals and state consumer protection agencies to remind them that broadband is regulated only at the federal level. It’s an interesting argument to make after the FCC has punted on regulating broadband and when this filing is asking the FTC to do the same. The ISPs want the FTC to leave them alone while asking the agency to act as the watchdog to stop others from trying to regulate the industry.

I think this pleading was inevitable since the big ISPs are trying to take full advantage of the FCC walking away from broadband regulation. The ISPs view this as an opportunity to kill regulation everywhere. At best the FTC would be a weak regulator of broadband, but the ISPs don’t want any scrutiny of the way they treat their customers.

The history of telecom regulation has always been in what I call waves. Over time the amount of regulations build up to a point where companies can make a valid claim of being over-regulated. Over-regulation can then be relieved either by Congress or by a business-friendly FCC who loosens regulatory constraints. But when regulations get too lax the big carriers inevitably break enough rules that attracts an increase of new regulation.

We are certainly hitting the bottom of a trough of a regulatory wave as regulations are being eliminated or ignored. Over time the large monopolies in the industry will do what monopolies always do. They will take advantage of this period of light regulation and will abuse customers in various ways and invite new regulations. My bet is that customer privacy will be the issue that will start the climb back to the top of the regulatory wave. The ISPs argument that market forces will force good behavior on their part is pretty laughable to anybody who has watched the big carriers over the years.

Can the FTC Regulate Broadband?











States and Net Neutrality











Broadband Regulation in Limbo

The recent ruling earlier this week by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit highlights the current weak state of regulations over broadband. The case is one that’s been around for years and stems from AT&T’s attempt to drive customers off of their original unlimited cellphone data plans. AT&T began throttling unlimited customers when they reached some unpublished threshold of data use, in some cases as small as 2 GB in a month. AT&T then lied to the FCC about the practice when they inquired. This case allows the FTC suit against AT&T to continue.

The ruling demonstrates that the FTC has some limited jurisdiction over common carriers like AT&T. However, the clincher came when the court ruled that the FTC only has jurisdiction over issues where the carriers aren’t engaging in common-carrier services. This particular case involves AT&T not delivering a product they promised to customers and thus falls under FTC jurisdiction. But the court made it clear that future cases that involve direct common carrier functions, such as abuse of net neutrality would not fall under the FTC.

This case clarifies the limited FTCs jurisdiction over ISPs and contradicts the FCC’s statements that the FTC is going to be able to step in and take their place on most matters involving broadband. The court has made it clear that is not the case. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised this court ruling and cited it as a good example of how the transition of jurisdiction to the FTC is going to work as promised. But in looking at the details of the ruling, that is not true.

This court ruling makes it clear that there is no regulatory body now in charge of direct common carrier issues. For instance, if Netflix and one of the ISPs get into a big fight about paid prioritization there would be nowhere for Netflix to turn. The FCC would refuse to hear the case. The FTC wouldn’t be able to take the case since it involves a common carrier issue. And while a court might take the case, they would have no basis on which to make a ruling. As long as the ISP didn’t break any other kinds of laws, such as reneging on a contract, a court would have no legal basis on which to rule for or against the ISPs behavior.

That means not only that broadband is now unregulated, it also means that there is no place for some body to complain against abuse by ISPs until the point where that abuse violates some existing law. That is the purest definition of limbo that I can think of for the industry.

To make matters worse, even this jumbled state of regulation is likely to more muddled soon by the courts involved in the various net neutrality suits. Numerous states have sued the FCC for various reasons, and if past practice holds, the courts are liable to put some or all of the FCC’s net neutrality decision on hold.

It’s hard to fathom what that might mean. For example, if the courts were to put the FCC’s decision to cancel Title II regulation on hold, then that would mean that Title II regulation would still be the law of the land until the net neutrality lawsuits are finally settled. But this FCC has made it clear that they don’t want to regulate broadband and they would likely ignore such a ruling in practice. The Commission has always had the authority to pick and choose cases it will accept and I’m picturing that they would refuse to accept cases that relied on their Title II regulation authority.

That would be even muddier for the industry than today’s situation. Back to the Netflix example, if Title II regulation was back in effect and yet the FCC refused to pursue a complaint from Netflix, then Netflix would likely be precluded from trying to take the issue to court. The Netflix complaint would just sit unanswered at the FCC, giving Netflix no possible remedy, or even a hearing about their issues.

The real issue that is gumming up broadband regulation is not the end of Title II regulation. The move to Title II regulation just became effective with the recent net neutrality decision and the FCCs before that had no problem tackling broadband issues. The real problem is that this FCC is washing their hands of broadband regulation, and supposedly tossed that authority to the FTC – something the court just made clear can’t work in the majority of cases.

This FCC has shown that there is a flaw in their mandate from Congress in that they feel they are not obligated to regulate broadband. So I guess the only fix will be if Congress makes the FCC’s jurisdiction, or lack of jurisdiction clear. Otherwise, we couldn’t even trust a future FCC to reverse course, because it’s now clear that the decision to regulate or not regulate broadband is up to the FCC and nobody else. The absolute worst long-term outcome would be future FCCs regulating or not regulating depending upon changes in the administration.

My guess is that AT&T and the other big ISPs are going to eventually come to regret where they have pushed this FCC. There are going to be future disputes between carriers and the ISPs are going to find that the FCC can not help them just like they can’t help anybody complaining against them. That’s a void that is going to serve this industry poorly.

FCC and FTC Divvy up Broadband Regulation

The FCC voted last Thursday to reverse the Net Neutrality order that had been put into place by the previous Tom Wheeler FCC. This action eliminates the use of Title II to regulate broadband. In order to get rid of Title II authority the FCC believes it has to relinquish some of its regulatory role today and to move certain regulatory functions to the Federal Trade Commission. To effectuate this shift the two Commissions have agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that defines the ongoing regulatory and enforcement responsibility of each agency related to broadband.

The Federal Trade Commission will renew investigating ISPs as they do other large businesses in the country. They will investigate complaints made against the companies for practices that the agency deems to be unfair or deceptive. The agency has undertaken this kind of investigation in the past and has cited and fined a few big ISPs for various deceptive pricing and billing practices. In this role the FTC could elect to tackle topics that were part of net neutrality such as anticompetitive blocking of Internet traffic, throttling customer broadband or paid prioritization practices. While the three legs of net neutrality would not explicitly be part of the FTCs responsibilities, they should be free to investigate practices that harm the public. The FTC would also take back jurisdiction over ISP privacy practices.

It appears that dropping the Title II regulatory regime allows the FTC to again regulate ISPs. Since the FCC approved Title II regulation, the big ISPs have argued that the FTC is prohibited by its charter to regulate common carriers. But since broadband providers are no longer considered to be common carriers it would seem to open the door to the FTC again.

The big difference in a shift to FTC regulation is that anything they do is done retroactively. They look at consumer complaints and then prosecute the worst abuses they find in multiple industries. But their rules often come years after abuse by companies and their rulings only generally affect one company at a time. Other ISPs might shift behavior due to an FTC enforcement action, but they are not required to do so. This is a drastic change from having a set of proactive regulations in rules in place that define acceptable ISP behavior.

The FCC will be giving up most regulatory oversight of broadband. There are still a few broadband rules that fall under FCC jurisdiction. For example, there are still rules in place that require ISPs to disclose information about their products, data speeds, etc., to customers. The FCC will still be monitoring and regulating these notices. There are also regulations that will remain in place because they were put in place by laws that can’t be reversed by the FCC. As an example, the FCC will still oversee CALEA compliance, where ISPs are required to provide access to broadband records to law enforcement.

Probably the biggest regulatory gray area left is cellular broadband. While broadband in general is now largely unregulated there are still numerous regulations about cellular service that remain in place. We’ll have to see how the FCC deals with any conflicts between old cellular rules and their desire to unregulated broadband.

To a large extent there will be little regulation of broadband and it is now an unregulated business line. This is a bit ironic in that broadband has grown to become the most important telecommunications product, while the many regulations on the waning product lines of telephone and cable TV still remain in place.

The FCC acknowledges that its technical staff best understands the ISP industry and has promised in the MOU to make FCC staff available to the FTC as needed. It will be interesting to see how that works in practice since some of the FTC investigations drag on for years. I foresee budgetary issues making major collaboration impractical.

The bottom line is that this MOU makes it clear that broadband is largely deregulated. The FTC can step in and punish ISPs that engage in fraudulent and unfair practices. But otherwise nobody will be monitoring or enforcing any regulations on broadband.

Broadband Regulation is in Limbo










