Progress Snapshot
Release 3.3 February 2007

by Scott Wallsten*

View as PDF

If there’s one thing Americans need, it's more television.

Video franchise reform would not only increase competition for cable TV services, but would also increase the supply of broadband services and demand for it, thus further increasing broadband competition and benefiting consumers. The FCC should thus be praised for pushing forward an important but controversial issue. The FCC's recent order also raises interesting questions about how reforms should handle legacy investments and highlights the need to pay attention to inherent consumer demand for broadband.

Back in December, the FCC adopted an order to reform video franchising regulations. Under the existing regime, municipalities grant franchises to companies wishing to offer video services. Historically, that meant the local cable company was the lone franchisee and was in effect granted a monopoly in exchange for paying a franchise fee and providing certain services, such as public access channels. Cable companies enjoyed largely monopoly status until satellite companies entered the market, generating competition. In part because they did not use actual wires, satellite companies were exempt from franchise rules.

The issue today is that the legacy telephone companies, in particular AT&T and Verizon, are rolling out optical fiber and want to offer video over those lines in addition to lightning-fast broadband service. In order to offer video they must negotiate for franchise agreements with each municipality. Reforms could substantially reduce transactions costs and make it easier to obtain those agreements.

Franchise reform is long overdue. While cities understandably want oversight over some aspects of installing this infrastructure, such as digging up neighborhood streets, there is no economic rationale for local franchising of video services. The need to obtain a franchise represents little more than a barrier to entry. Removing this barrier will yield real consumer benefits in the form of additional broadband competition and additional video competition. Indeed, franchise reform is one of the few policies (along with moving more spectrum into the market) almost guaranteed to increase competition.

The FCC is now grappling with the sticky question of how to apply the order to incumbents and has requested comments on how the order should apply to existing franchisees (the cable companies).

As a matter of economic efficiency, the key question is how the order affects investment going forward. Thus, if franchise reforms increase efficiency - and by removing regulations not targeted at a market failure they should - then any reforms should apply to all firms in the market, regardless of their historic franchise benefits and obligations.

Excluding the cable companies from reforms would perpetuate inefficient asymmetric regulation of the same services. In the early days of broadband the telecom firms were required to share their networks with competitors while the cable companies were not. The cable companies were able to gain far more customers than were the telephone companies in part because cable faced fewer regulations. Granting franchise relief to telecom firms but not their cable competitors would represent new asymmetric regulation, this time giving a relative advantage to the telcos. To avoid this inefficiency, any franchise reforms granted to the telephone companies should immediately be granted to the cable operators as well.

Nevertheless, any non-economic factors that might delay cable companies from being able to benefit from franchise reform should not also delay changes that will ease market entry. Franchise reforms should happen immediately, and they should apply to cable companies as soon as practicably possible.

Franchising also highlights the issue of broadband demand, which gets relatively little attention. Consumer demand for broadband is, in part, a function of the content available to them. Some countries that are frequently held up as broadband models, like Japan and France, explicitly allow TV over broadband lines. The ability to watch TV over broadband increases consumer demand for the service. Franchise regulations, by making it difficult to offer TV services that way, artificially depress demand for broadband services.

Video franchising today has two negative impacts on broadband investment: it reduces competition by creating an entry barrier, and suppresses demand by arbitrarily limiting the type of content allowed to flow over the lines. Franchise reforms thus represent an excellent opportunity to promote broadband investment and adoption in the U.S.

OK, maybe we don’t need to spend more time in front of the tube. But more competition for getting video to it could generate substantial consumer benefits.

*Scott Wallsten is a senior fellow and director of communications policy studies for The Progress & Freedom Foundation. The views expressed here are their own, and are not necessarily the views of the PFF board, fellows or staff.