Trust

The ongoing saga of antitrust litigation has been fascinating to me since I first wrote at length about the crusade in 2002. (Despite its age, that story is well worth reading if you haven’t yet; it’s like the thriller John Grisham would have written if, instead of becoming a lawyer, he’d have been a public utility commissioner.)

This week’s Supreme Court ruling provides some interesting insight into those continuing debates. It’s also a nice victory for the Bells, since it sets a high bar for anyone hoping to take them to court with antitrust complaints.

The application of antitrust litigation to the Bell companies is sort of disorienting, as the unique characteristics of the Bell story intersect the law at near-right angles. Antitrust law is, of course, the government’s guard against private monopolies; but the Bell companies spent most of their lives as government-sanctioned monopolies. In addition, the law prohibits Bells from undermining competition; but the Telecom Act of 1996 required them to aid their competitors. I certainly don’t envy any judge tasked with making sense of all these contradictions. Just thinking about it is like looking at an M.C. Escher painting with a hangover.

How we think about competition and anticompetition today, amid the cable/telco wars, isn’t necessarily any simpler. Is the presence of two residential triple-play providers in a given market enough for consumers to see the benefits? And if it’s not, what then?

E-mail me at ed.gubbins@penton.com.