1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Usage-based pricing has rapidly become one of the most controversial topics in Internet policy. Many broadband providers have been migrating from all-you-can-eat, flat-rate pricing to a variety of consumption-based pricing models. This trend has been most prominent in the wireless broadband sector, where monthly data limits were an almost inevitable solution to the surge in data demand unleashed by the smartphone and tablet revolution. Some fixed broadband providers have adopted much larger data caps for residential broadband use as well.
While regulators have generally approved this shift, some consumer groups have viewed the change with skepticism, fearing that usage-based pricing will usher in an era of higher prices, deteriorating service, and increasingly anticompetitive conduct. They are concerned that data caps serve as anticompetitive tools with which broadband providers can protect their legacy cable affiliates from upstarts such as Netflix and Hulu. They also fear that firms will use capacity constraints to create artificial scarcity and pad profits while avoiding necessary network upgrades.
Professor Daniel Lyons evaluated the public policy implications for usage-based pricing strategies. Professor Lyons is an assistant professor at Boston College Law School. He specializes in the areas of property, telecommunications and administrative law. Before joining the faculty, Professor Lyons practiced energy, telecommunications, and administrative law at the firm of Munger, Tolles and Olson in Los Angeles. He also clerked for the Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Hudson Senior Fellow Harold Furchtgott-Roth facilitated the discussion.
Please join Hudson Institute for a fireside chat with Senior Fellow and Keystone Defense Initiative Director Rebeccah Heinrichs and John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and co-director of the Urban Warfare Project.
Join Hudson Institute and the Ben Franklin Fellowship for a two-panel discussion examining US policy as it confronts the crisis of terror in Nigeria.
Join Hudson Institute's Center for the Economics of the Internet for a keynote address given by Tricia Paoletta on the Trump administration's progress in managing and reallocating the electromagnetic radio frequency spectrum from the federal domain.
Join Hudson Institute for a discussion with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Senior Fellow Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
