This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access. Using the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBC Universal as a lens, Crawford examines how we have created the biggest monopoly since the breakup of Standard Oil a century ago. In the clearest terms, this book explores how telecommunications monopolies have affected the daily lives of consumers and America's global economic standing.

Another Friday filing by the FCC: 146 pages on program access. It’s a classic on-the-one-hand-on-the-other item. This time around it’s even worse for the public, because the underlying competitive reality of the wires that run to American homes is being hidden, in two ways: First, the entire discussion is focused on the market for pay-TV, because that’s the subject of the rules being examined. That’s the wrong market definition from a consumer’s point of view. Consumers are buying both data and video in bundles, and in that bundled marketplace we don’t have competition.

"...[A]fter a decade of steady deregulation, during which communications companies asserted that new wires required new rules, the companies are in charge of themselves. What's more, those that sell network connections in the U.S. are trying to claim a constitutional right to operate without any federal oversight."

"America should be planning for this communications utility in the same way we plan for water and electricity — ensuring that conduit is everywhere. With a functioning wholesale marketplace, competitive retail providers could keep us from being stuck with operators that can harvest additional revenues solely because of their physical market power over basic pipes and wires (think Comcast making 95% margins on its broadband product)."

"...[A] vertically integrated, market-dominating carrier such as Comcast could now employ its usage caps (which wouldn't necessarily apply to its own or affiliated services) to effectively squeeze out competitors providing information, entertainment or connections that Comcast didn't want to support."

"...[T]he worst outcome of all for consumers might be an Apple victory that leads to a settlement with Samsung: We would be left with nothing but Apple-licensed clones on the market. And Apple itself would always be able to avoid antitrust liability by claiming it still faces energetic competition."

"The DOJ has opened a broad inquiry into the practices and powers of the cable industry: that's the good news. As policymakers finalize this gargantuan deal, they should keep in mind that America's economic future needs a diet rich in fiber that enables competition and treats our digital future as something more than just an appliance."

"Fiber policy is wireless policy, and building fiber deep into cities and towns across the country will also get us the nomadic connectivity we can't live without. Say you spend thirty seconds or so waiting for a link to load or an app to function on your wireless device. In Japan, they're not waiting; it may take two seconds or less for a response. Multiply that over all Americans painfully clicking 100 times, assume very conservatively that they're making $10/hour, and you've got an enormous nationwide productivity loss: $3 trillion a year."

"We seem bent on providing the technological equivalent of the Olympic sport of dressage — high-speed Internet access only for rich people. We're prancing around a core market failure that is undermining the future of our economy. The Internet was supposed to be for everyone."

"We should be talking about fiber networks that enable rich clouds of nomadic connectivity and commodity devices that can access those networks and any content or application they want. Wireless policy is fiber policy, and abundant network capacity should be our common goal."