Article content

When is an industry competitive and when is it an oligopoly that destroys competition and needs to be controlled? These days it’s a question that produces contradictory answers.

In telecom, a perpetual warzone of competition theory, the net-neutrality battle looms as an illustration. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday it plans to allow cable and wireless firms greater control over content, thus increasing competition among carriers and undermining the net-neutrality theory that such carriers should be forced to treat all content more or less equally.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Terence Corcoran: Wanna know how stupid 'net neutrality' is? Ask Loblaw. Yes Loblaw. Back to video

In some ways, this is a battle between two opposing factions that wield what some consider extreme market power. On one side are the Google, Facebook and Amazon monoliths of the web, opposing the FCC move that favours AT&T, Verizon and other monoliths of telecom.

In an added complication, the U.S. Justice Department is trying to block AT&T’s takeover of Time Warner because it would give the telecom giant too much power over content. The competition theory is that AT&T could prevent competitors such a Verizon from getting access to, say, HBO, which is a Time Warner service. That seems like a nutty thing for AT&T to do, since harming HBO’s ability to sell its service to non-AT&T internet providers could slash HBO’s audience and undermine AT&T’s investment in Time Warner.