The statute wants a competitive analysis, but as the Commission correctly points out, competition is not the goal, it the means. Better performance is the goal. When the evidence presented in the Sixteenth Report is viewed in this way, the conclusion to be reached about the mobile industry, at least to me, is obvious: the U.S. mobile wireless industry is performing exceptionally well for consumers, regardless of whether or not it satisfies someone’s arbitrarily-defined standard of “effective competition.”
— George Ford, Phoenix Center chief economist, commenting on the FCC’s 16th Wireless Competition report.
