Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, November 17, 2009 - The consulting firm Empiris LLC joined a host of cable and phone broadband network related entities on Tuesday when it slammed a recent study from Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society on broadband policy.
In July the Federal Communications Commission commissioned the Berkman Center to review the existing literature and studies on broadband deployment and usage throughout the world to inform the FCC’s development of a National Broadband Plan. The FCC is sought
public comment on the study through November 16.
Empiris held a teleconference with bloggers Tuesday to discuss its problems with the report. Empiris argues that the study failed to provide an accurate summary of broadband policies in other countries and advances “conclusions that conflict with the evidence found in existing research.”
“The central question for developing broadband services and the infrastructure required to deliver them is how to provide the requisite incentives for carrier investment in such infrastructure,” noted Robert Crandall, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a senior expert for Empiris, in a statement. “The Berkman Study ignores this issue, focusing instead on a policy of intra-platform competition that has been thoroughly discredited in...
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Monday, September 28th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
A Congressional workshop will examine the proper application of antitrust policy to the information technology sector and scrutinize the direction the new administration is taking. The workshop will occur on October 16 in the Rayburn Office building. The workshop has the potential to explore how the application of government antitrust law can significantly affect innovation and investment, for good or ill.
The event is expected to focus on innovation and whether pro-competitive, pro-consumer behavior in high-tech may differ from such behavior in more traditional industries, as well as on how antitrust enforcement balances the risks of failing to stop potentially anticompetitive activities.
The panel will be moderated by Thomas Lenard of the Technology Policy Institute and will feature:
- David Evans, University of Chicago and University College London;
- Douglas Melamed, Wilmer Hale, former Acting Assistant Attorney General, Antitrust Division;
- Philip Weiser, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for International, Policy and Appellate Matters, Antitrust Division;
- Joshua Wright, George Mason University School of Law; and
- Jonathan Zuck, Association for Competitive Technology
IT firms have characteristics that make antitrust enforcement more complex, including significant amounts of intangible capital, supply- and demand-side economies of scale, and rapidly changing markets characterized by continuous innovation. The new administration...
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