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This chapter offers an historical overview and analysis of US broadcast regulation. It demonstrates how seemingly race-neutral policies – the interpretation of “public interest,” the preference for incumbents, the application of the First Amendment, and the embrace of colorblindness within US media policy – has functioned to entrench White interests in the broadcasting sector. Drawing on critical policy studies and critical race theory, this chapter illuminates how broadcast regulation has been a technology of White privilege, one that has had substantial consequences for the distribution of both material and symbolic resources as well as for the contours of the public sphere in the United States.

This paper aims to analyze the contradictions between telecommunications regulation and environmental law in America, via coverage of the problem of large numbers of birds being killed at communications towers.

Via statutory, legal, and qualitative analysis, this article provides an analysis of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) compliance with environmental statutes and the conflicts that arise between the agency's mandate to maintain a robust telecommunications network and its statutory responsibilities for environmental protection.

Every year, millions of birds are killed at communications towers. In 1999, the US Fish and Wildlife Service issued guidelines urging the FCC to take action on this problem, as required by various environmental statutes. The FCC ignored the guidelines for several years and defeated the American Bird Conservancy in court when that group sued for observance of the guidelines, but this ruling was later overturned on appeal. The FCC has exhibited a pattern of responding to these developments years after the fact while obfuscating its previous history of non‐compliance and non‐cooperation. As of early 2012 no viable solution to the avian mortality problem has been proposed.

The FCC is required to comply with federal environmental statutes and regulations. However, citizens wishing to dispute FCC environmental compliance will face challenges arising from conflicting statutes and inconsistencies in federal agency behavior.

There has been very little research on the intersection of environmental law and telecommunications regulation, and the particular matter of avian mortality at communications towers has only been analyzed by ornithologists and environmental scientists.

This paper aims to analyze the environmental and historic preservation precedents that have been adopted and acknowledged by telecommunications firms when expanding their physical infrastructures.

This paper will conduct a policy analysis of contradictory regulatory goals that are expected to arise during the near-future rollout of 5G in the USA. This will be done via traditional legal research combined with a critical policy focus. Particular attention will be given to the public interest remedies that have been established for companies that have used private or public property.

Due to the spatial requirements of 5G network infrastructure, telecommunications policy (in which network development is paramount) is expected to conflict with land use-oriented regulations (environmental and historic preservation) in places where new 5G infrastructure must be approved and built.

Ultimately, the paper will argue that conflicts will arise in local areas where the 5G rollout is expected to impact environmentally pristine areas or historic buildings.

Research in the environmental effects of 5G technology in general is becoming common, but conflicts between network construction and particular environmental or historic preservation regulations has not been the topic of organized research thus far.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

This paper examines the relationship between television station ownership characteristics and local news and public affairs programming through an expanded analysis of data from the Federal Communication's Commission (FCC's) recent study of Big Four broadcast network affiliates. The results indicate that the FCC's conclusion that network‐owned and operated stations provide more local news and public affairs programming than other affiliates, and that stations with newspaper holdings provide more local news and public affairs programming than stations without newspaper holdings holds up only when these two program types are analyzed in combination. When these two program types are analyzed independently, and when additional explanatory factors are taken into consideration, these ownership characteristics are positively related to news programming, but not to public affairs programming.

In the USA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides support to State and local governments in fulfilment of their responsibilities for preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation of disasters. One method FEMA has used to support State and local emergency communication functions was to sign and implement a Memorandum of Understanding with the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) for amateur radio operators to provide electronic communications for State and local governments in disasters. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has licensed more than 600,000 amateur radio operators in the USA. The national organization of amateur radio operators called the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) was formed in 1914. More than 80,000 of these amateurs have registered their availability for emergency communications in disasters in the ARRL’s Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES). Amateur radio operators have been providing communications in natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes since 1910. Since amateur radio operation was prohibited during the years of both World Wars I and II, FEMA has sponsored a new branch of the amateur service called Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES). RACES operators are authorized to operate if the President invokes his War Emergency Powers while all other amateur operation would be silenced. Examines the role of amateur radio in providing emergency electronic communications for disaster management and explores future contributions.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to review net neutrality and the notion that bright light rules are necessary to hold broadband providers from exercising market power. The 2015 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Open Internet Order asserted that broadband providers have the capability and incentive to harm their customers and third-party service providers. It imposed a set of rules to control broadband providers’ offers, prices, and traffic management. The 2017 FCC vacated all but the transparency provisions of the OIO, restoring the oversight of broadband to the FTC.

This paper offers a review of the evidence regarding the effects of net neutrality regulation, including an investigation of the incidence of violations, or lack thereof, during the 2020 pandemic in the United States. It provides a review of the net neutrality literature and the international research on broadband provider behaviour during COVID-19. The paper presents original research conducted with FCC and FTC reports and a survey of news stories. Brief reviews of federal data on network performance and broadband adoption provide additional context. Given the limited incidence of violations that could be uncovered for the period, the paper suggests why broadband providers behaved opposite to regulatory advocates’ predictions. Contrary to many policy assertions, broadband providers did not block or throttle service, nor did they increase prices arbitrarily or decrease quality. Broadband providers appeared to expand availability, lower broadband prices, and make more networks available, frequently without customer charge. The paper suggests how policy could be updated to reflect the actual behaviour of broadband providers.

Sheds light on the “new” Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and its opportunity to fashion an Agenda for Reform to fulfil the 1999 Act’s vision. Submits that since the passing of the Act, some progress has, of course, been made and this progress should be recognized. Concludes there is no shortage of work to be done to bring the newly constituted Commission’s policies more in line with the realities of the pre‐competitive and deregulatory vision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In 1999 the Federal Communications Commission adopted an order granting complete deregulation of the rates for special access service for specific metropolitan statistical areas based on an objective showing that there was potential competition in that market. This was done in an environment where the local exchange carriers (LECs) subject to price caps were earning a rate of return in excess of 22 percent, with the rate of return on an upward trend. By 2002, the average rate of return across all price cap LECs topped 35 percent. The question that is investigated in this paper is whether the price cap LECs have market power in supplying special access service and whether they have taken advantage of this. The data clearly show that this is the case. Given the prevailing situation, there is a clear need to revisit the pricing flexibility order. First, the product market for special access service needs to be more carefully examined. Second, the metrics used to define the potential for competition need to be revamped.

Discussions between the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and communications policy makers and regulators in other countries have gleaned several clusters of issues where further research would directly benefit them. Recently, there have been two notable shifts. First, as the acceptance of the competition model over the monopoly model for telecommunications markets takes deep effect in regulators all over the world, questions regarding process and procedure for regulation are becoming ever more urgent. This paper discusses current questions regarding decision making, enforcement, and understanding consumer issues that arise often in the FCC's discussions with other regulators. Second, technological change is potentially shifting market definitions. In the FCC's discussion with other regulators over the last two years, the overlap of wireline telecom, wireless telecom and cable television has become more pronounced.