Voice, Video and Broadband: The Changing Competitive Landscape and Its Impact on Consumers

摘要

Increasing competition in the telecommunications industry has produced substantial benefits for consumers, and has the potential to generate even greater benefits in the future. Companies that once provided voice telephony or video services alone are increasingly competing against each other across a wide variety of products. Cable companies today offer telephone services to more than 100 million U.S. households (or over 80 percent of households) and have upgraded their facilities to increase Internet broadband speeds and provide a widerarray of programming. At the same time, telephone companies are rapidly building and expanding fiber-optic networks to provide a wide range of services to an increasing number of customers, including multichannel video programming and increasingly robust Internet access. In addition, competition among providers of mobile wireless voice and data services is resulting in rapidly rising access speeds, dramatically expanding the functionality of mobile devices, and potentially altering the future competitive dynamic between wireless and wireline services. As telecommunications firms expand their offerings, lines between once well-delineated industry segments blur, and consumers see greater competitive options. Antitrust will continue to play an important role in this process. Antitrust law protects the competitive process, which in turn protects consumers. In the telecommunications industry,the competitive process has helped generate innovation to bring consumers a wider range ofchoices of products and services. The Department of Justice protects competition through its roles as both enforcer of the antitrust laws and advocate for sound competition policy. The Departments competition advocacy is particularly important in the telecommunications industry, where government regulations significantly shape the competitive landscape. To enhance its ability to fulfill those responsibilities, in November 2007 the Department hosted a Symposium focusing on competition among providers of video programming delivery,local telephony, and broadband services. Industry executives, economists, analysts, and local government officials participated at the Symposium and through written submissions, offering a variety of perspectives. This report summarizes their views.