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.

It is gratifying to observe the FTC making cogent and pragmatic observations regarding their overlapping mission with the FCC.

The FCC in turn must accept as sincere and relevant the FTC's observed need for more competition and consumer protection from existing monopolies .Further their joint responsibilities have to include not allowing Broadband stimulus to provide any foundation for more monopolies.

THE FCC WILL ADDRESS MONOPOLY ACTIONS BY CABLE AND TELCO...WE HOPE.

A very real, almost proximate  issue is the separation of Content and Infrastructure. The pending use of Stimulus funds could very well be the impetus for requiring that separation.

New companies, as well as applications from the existing monoliths in Cable and Telco, including wireless, should be required to develop their applications  with an eye only to Infrastructure delivery, with Content, of which there will be hundreds of willing applicants, encouraged to offer service packages and tiers discrete and separate, through separate enterprises.

Content suppliers MUST be allowed reasonable access at reasonable cost, and that requires the Commission to place that requirement into the Application and approval process.

Subsequent to the Stimulus Program successful process ensuring Content and Infrastructure separation, the FCC/FTC must then undertake the forced separation of Content and Infrastructure from existing CABLE AND TELCO AND WIRELESS monopolies, so that competitive suppliers can offer discrete tiers of service for Entertainment programming, Data, Internet, and product and service packages that haven't been thought of yet.

The groundwork must be laid in the process for the hoped-for Holy Grail of Internet-AnyThing, AnyTime, AnyWhere (AAA).

There is no reason for the U.S. to lag other developed countries, some Third World countries even, in Broadband speed, access and service delivery.