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Friday 7 November 2014

New York City Media Seminar: Net Neutrality

Nicholas Economides, from NYU was the speaker of last week's NYC Media Seminar. He talked about Net neutrality and its regulatory implications. The topic is complex and among the handful of theoretical models, each only captures a somewhat simplified version of the problem. What emerges from their analysis is ambiguous. We had a great debate concluding that some regulation is clearly needed but maybe it shouldn't be too heavy handed (not too clear as a recommendation). It was also evident that the issue of Net neutrality is so critical in the USA because there is generally insufficient competition on the consumer broadband market (in contrast to Europe, for example). A special treat of the seminar was that it took place in the AP's so-called "fishball room", where, every day, the AP decided what news around the world should be published by news outlets. Not quite but almost...

2 comments:

  1. Today, President Obama came out strong in favor of net neutrality effectively asking the FCC to implement a strong form of the concept. Cable and ISP stock prices plunged some 4-6% as a result. Yet, this strong battle over net neutrality may take focus away from the real issue: lack of competition at the ISP level,

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  2. Actually, a super summary of the recent history of regulatory blunder can be read here, by The Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21632020?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/presidentialimportance

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