Sector-Specific Competition Enforcement at the FCC

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) charge to promote the public interest in the communications sector encompasses a mandate to foster competition.1 The FCC is far from the only federal agency with an interest in competitive communications markets. The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s generalist antitrust enforcers, also seek to ensure that communications markets (as well as all other industries) perform competitively. These Remarks explain how and why sector-specific enforcement by the FCC complements generalist competition enforcement to the benefit of competition in the communications industry. These Remarks also discuss the ways in which a sector-specific agency such as the FCC can foster competition and promote other public goals, and compare merger reviews by the DOJ and the FCC in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.2 One might expect to see little difference in how the competitive effects of mergers are analyzed at the FCC versus the DOJ and the FTC. After all, the economists at these agencies have similar training and think about industrial organization economics in the same way. Indeed, some FCC economists have previously worked at