Video Games: The Oddly Familiar Terms of Debate About Telco Entry Into the Video Services Market

Two clichés sum up the telecommunications policy world for the past half dozen years. First, the only constant is change. Second, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The main topics of debate have turned, in just three years, from unbundled network elements and “open access” to video franchising reform and “net neutrality.” But the deep structure of the debate remains eerily familiar. As discussed below, the disputes today, like those three years ago, still concern (i) the role of cooperative federalism in implementing national telecommunications policy, (ii) the extent to which upstarts should be permitted to skim the cream of the incumbent’s customer base, (iii) how to characterize new services within an outdated statutory framework, and (iv) whether regulatory intervention is needed to keep last-mile broadband providers from harming the Internet.