Should the ’96 Telecom Act Be Updated or Superseded?

Just a few?  Well, no.  Lots.  Lots and lots of consolidation.  One of the Baby Bells even got so big (absorbing other Baby Bells) it bought the shell of American Telephone and Telegraph and changed its name from Southwestern Bell to AT&T.  The Baby Bells that escaped being bought by AT&T wound up part of Verizon.  They, in effect, split the country.

Meanwhile, AT&T grabbed the larger satellite provider, Directv, becoming the company with the most monthly subscribers to a video service.  And Verizon will soon double down on digital content with AOL and Yahoo (well, probably).

That ’96 Telecom Act didn’t foresee those changes.  Heck, back then most folks thought the Internet was AOL dial up.

The huge companies of today that rely on our fiber/cable infrastructure didn’t exist back in ’96.  Back then, newspapers, broadcast television and magazines dominated the news business driven by robust advertising revenues.

Today, according to a number of studies Google and Facebook represent about 85% of digital advertising.  Quite a lot of that advertising drove the development of profitable “fake news.”  So, yeah.  When you look at all the changes, it’s past time to write a new Telecom-Internet-TV-Media-Copyright-Communications.

The big question is, who’s gonna do it? The current Republican majority? The Trumpian White House? With or without Federal Confusion Committee input?

Just a thought: Be careful what you wish for …

Random Notes w/Predictions

So, what should we wish for?  Net neutrality without Title II?  No rate regulation at all?  Changing copyright to make it easier for other in-home devices?     Looking to the folks running the relevant Congressional committees and sub-committees and the new Chairman of the FCC, anything is possible.

Here’s what I think will happen over the next decade, no matter what happens to the relevant laws and/or rules:

• The big will keep getting bigger.
• The Comcast model will dominate. Others will copy it. That is, distribution and content will co-exist.
• The FCC’s zero rating actions that dropped the core Internet mantra of treating all content alike will accelerate changes.
• Another basic media mantra will vanish as some premium content controlled by one distributor will be withheld from others creating a perceived unique benefit. (Well, not that unique. Can you say NFL Sunday Ticket?)
• Each distributor will have to develop or own its own significant content.
• The result will be five or six major vertically integrated connected media companies.
• And then a new regime in Washington will re-discover the Theodore Vail model of a public/private monopoly and recreate the early 20^th Century model of a guaranteed rate of return coupled with public “responsibilities.”

No telling how long before competition gets back on top … again.

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