Recommendation

Congress should reform the FCC’s merger review process to add specificity to the public-interest standard.

Details

The FCC reviews telecommunications mergers under the notoriously squishy public-interest standard, leading to an unpredictable process and, occasionally, the appearance of transactional conditions drawn out of merging parties. Congress should add more specificity to the public-interest standard in the context of merger review. That should include a requirement that the FCC evaluate a merger’s impact on dynamic innovation.

Keep reading:

▪ Robert D. Atkinson, “The Role of Competition in a National Broadband Policy” (ITIF, October 2007), https://itif.org/publications/2007/10/07/role-competition-national-broadband-policy.