Killing Program Access and Broadband Competition

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. Removing program access protections is just going to make that uncompetitive situation even worse. Second, the information that would allow the public to understand just how powerful Comcast and Time Warner Cable are in their geographic clusters has been removed from public view.

Because it takes a few sentences to explain this stuff, the mainstream media will likely not pay attention. Maybe there’s a hardy, detail-oriented reporter out there who is willing to take this on. In hopes – here we go...

[This article appears in its entirety on SCrawford.net. Read the full post here].