Fifty years ago, we accepted that there were natural monopolies in telecommunications and that government regulation and anti-trust laws were the best ways to manage them. Unfortunately, that’s all gone. Susan Crawford’s excellent and accessible book focuses on the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, now a single company that is both the dominant broadband Internet company in many areas and a leading TV program producer. Competitors, whether large companies (Verizon) or small (RCN), face high fees to provide Comcast-controlled TV channels. The result is higher prices for broadband than in other countries, and bundling, requiring consumers to pay for TV channels they may not want. Back in 1995, the New Yorker ran a cartoon showing two mice watching TV and saying, “That’s the catnip channel. We had to take it to get the cheese channel.”

Independent media producers have trouble getting to customers. Ever since TV networks were allowed to broadcast shows they produced (forbidden between 1970 and 1993), they have demanded at least partial ownership of the shows, and the monopoly position of Comcast makes it difficult for outside companies to reach viewers. Companies wishing to use the Internet to provide video on demand (most notably Netflix and Google/YouTube) find themselves faced with limits on the content they can show, limits on the bandwidth they can use, and demands for extra payment. Not only does this extract money from consumers and other companies, but it limits diversity and new ideas in video content.

This book focuses on the politics, not the technology. It reviews the history of regulation and anti-trust, and how conventional wisdom has moved back and forth, but currently believes in the free market. Reality is about lobbying and people, however. As an amusing example, knowing that Senator Jay Rockefeller enjoyed listening to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Comcast became a platinum sponsor of the Washington Bach Consort. So did AT&T, T-Mobile, Lockheed Martin, and Deutsche Telekom. None of these corporate supporters of good music have shown up for the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Carnegie Hall in New York, or the Chicago Symphony.

Aggressive lobbying and dubious economic studies (claiming that there is real competition in the telecommunications industry) have blocked virtually all attempts to limit the behavior of Comcast and similar companies. Minor conditions on mergers are bypassed or ignored. The book does have one high note near the end, when it describes how the Justice Department stopped the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. It also mentions some efforts at municipal fiber systems, but observes that they are blocked from economical access to TV programs by the large cable companies. Google has introduced a fiber-to-the-home system in Kansas City, but the response of the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association was to introduce a bill in the state legislature to prohibit municipalities from helping Google expand its service.

The book also discusses the question of openness. The Internet brought a huge increase in the number of books, videos, and musical tracks we can access. Some come from the major publishers and some from individuals. Monopoly companies sometimes wish to keep readers or viewers within a controlled area, seeing only content from those companies and their partners. The author explains the commercial steps taken to discourage new entrants from providing services over monopoly wires.

This book is both instructive and entertaining. I wish the overall message were more encouraging. I retain some optimism that disruptive services such as Netflix as well as technological improvements will force the incumbent companies to improve service, if only as part of their desire to maintain a dominant position. Or, government policy might change as it becomes increasingly embarrassing that other countries have faster and more widespread broadband service.

My major criticism of the book is that although it mentions that other countries are doing this better, it says little about why. Is the problem the people? For example, the current head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) (Tom Wheeler) was previously head of two major industry groups, the National Cable Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and the CTIA. The current head of the NCTA is Michael Powell, who was formerly head of the FCC! In contrast, in France, the head of ARCEP (short for Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques et des postes) is Jean-Ludovic Silicani, who was trained at École Nationale d’Administration (ENA) and is a professional civil servant. Or is the issue more one of policy? In South Korea, there is both government financial support and a requirement for competition and openness. The book does not evaluate an argument made by the monopoly companies that any attempt to improve competition hurts their financial position and thus makes it difficult to raise capital to improve the infrastructure. Fortunately, the costs of infrastructure continue to decline, and around the world it seems that competition and unbundling are associated with faster and cheaper service.

This book is recommended for anyone with an interest in government policies about broadband or net neutrality, or those interested in the future of entertainment and the web. It is enjoyable to read and very up to date.

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