Welcome to the Tech Policy podcast. I'm Evan's Watchdraber. On today's show, setting the price that a business pays for broadband, when it comes to so-called special access services, should businesses that provide broadband service be the ones to decide how much it costs, or should the FCC be meddling in that decision?

Joining me to discuss this is Bruce Melman, co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance.

Bruce, thanks for joining the show.

Thanks for having me.

So before we get into the whole issue of what the FCC is proposing, special access services,

this is not your typical broadband connection that you get at home, where you have either a telephone company, a cable company, or a fiber company.

You pay for a certain speed, and that's what you get.

These are business services, like, you know, when you see a secretary answering the phone,

or kind of, it's regulated in a different way.

So why does the FCC take a different approach to

special access than home broadband or what are these services? So the FCC's approach, more than

anything else, reflects a legacy mindset, legacy regulations and a world that is no more. I mean,

first and foremost, the services you're likely to get

at your business are not all that different than the services you're likely to get home.

It's high-speed data. And with people wanting to have mobile HD video, the capacity you need

for that's not all that different than the capacity you're going to need at your office or at work.

Though, of course, if a business is large enough, then just by sheer volume, they may seek a greater capacity and greater bandwidth in the aggregate than you might in your home.

But what consumers receive and what they do with, it's not all that different.

I would also note when you talked about those providing services to consumers, wireless is increasingly a huge provider. Right. Yeah, wireless broadband

is increasingly becoming a viable substitute for wireline broadband. When we talk about 5G speed,

those speeds might be fairly comparable to what you have in your home at its best, if not better.

But before I screwed this show up by not having enough memory on the card,

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