FTC Asks FCC To Study Internet Competition
The FTC urged the FCC on Friday to take into consideration the consumer protection agency's primary missions of promoting competition and safeguarding consumers in the marketplace as the FCC develops its national broadband plan. "The FCC deserves tremendous credit for its leadership in creating a national broadband policy that will help bring high-speed Internet access and services to Americans across the nation," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a press release. "As the agency that shares jurisdiction over broadband and the Internet, we look forward to working with the FCC in fulfilling this historic mission."
The FTC's response to an FCC notice of inquiry points out that competition and consumer protection work together to benefit individuals. Competition pressures producers and service providers to offer customers the most attractive array of choices with respect to price, quality, and other options, the agency said. At the same time, consumer protection policy promotes informed decision-making by customers and requires sellers to provide meaningful, timely information. The FTC's comments also question whether there is significant broadband competition and recommends using analytical tools embraced by the FTC and Justice Department in antitrust cases.
Consumer protections also are essential to help foster greater adoption of broadband, the FTC said. Those include meaningful and timely disclosures of service terms by broadband providers and strong data security policies that will safeguard consumer information and ease potential consumer concerns about online privacy. Privacy protections are particularly important, given new technologies that allow broadband providers to track consumers' online activities, to identify the source and content of much of the data they handle, and to manage that data in increasingly sophisticated ways, such as delivering targeted advertising online, officials said.
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