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2019年3月20日，美国联邦贸易委员会举办主题为“美国宽带市场的竞争和消费者保护问题”的听证会，该听证会一经报道，立即引发了学界和实务界的广泛讨论。本期知竞团队翻译了国际法律与经济中心于2019年5月31日在其网站上发布的文章，以保持对该听证会及其相关问题的持续关注。囿于篇幅，本文主要对文章的前言部分进行翻译，文章原文可点击文末“阅读原文”获取。

FTC Hearings on Competition & Consumer Protection in the 21st Century – Topic 10: Broadband Competition

Comments of the International Center for Law & Economics

美国联邦贸易委员会关于21世纪竞争与消费者保护的听证会—主题10：宽带竞争

国际法律和经济中心的评论

Introduction

前言

I. Ex post analysis of ISP conduct would yield the optimal balance of consumer protection and innovation incentives

对互联网服务提供商的行为的事后分析将服从于消费者保护和创新激励的最佳平衡。

The necessity of the FTC’s involvement in regulating broadband competition arises most recently from the Federal Communication Commission’s (“FCC”) 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (“2018 RIFO”). In the 2018 RIFO, the FCC adopted a competition-oriented approach to preventing what are otherwise violations of so-called “net neutrality” principles. This approach, consistent with the FCC’s historical deregulatory approach to information services, directly implicates the FTC as an important part of preventing competitive injuries that harm downstream consumers.

美国联邦贸易委员会管制宽带竞争的必要性源于美国联邦通信委员会所提出的2018年恢复互联网自由秩序法案。2018年，美国联邦通信委员会采取了一种以竞争为导向的方法来防止违反“网络中立”原则的行为。这个方法符合美国联邦通信委员会一直以来对信息服务所实施的放松管制政策，该方法直接将美国联邦贸易委员会作为防止对下游消费者产生竞争损害的一个重要组成部分。

Rather than simply presuming harm, the FCC undertook an extensive, thorough, and fact-based analysis to first assess the likely risk of competitive harms that could arise in the broadband market. Based on this analysis, it concluded that the risk of harmful conduct is low, in terms of both the likelihood that ISPs will engage in such conduct and its potential adverse effects on consumers. Because this risk is low, the FCC determined that a “light-touch,” competition-oriented regulatory approach was appropriate for regulation of broadband.

美国联邦通信委员会进行了广泛、彻底和基于事实地分析，这并不是简单地推定损害，而是首先评估宽带市场可能出现的竞争损害风险。根据该分析，美国联邦通信委员会得出结论，从互联网服务提供商参与此类行为的可能性及其对消费者的潜在不利影响来看，有害行为的风险较低。由于此风险较低，美国联邦通信委员会认为“轻触”竞争的监管方法同样适用于对宽带市场的监管。

This conclusion also followed from the FCC’s review of the Communications Act. As the FCC observed, “[t]he Communications Act includes an antitrust savings clause, so the antitrust laws apply with equal vigor to entities regulated by the Commission.” Recognizing this, the Commission carefully structured the 2018 RIFO so that consumers would be protected under existing consumer protection and antitrust laws, while still leaving room for the historically applied light-touch regime for information services under Title I of the Communications Act.

这一结论也是根据美国联邦通信委员会对美国通信法的审查作出的。正如美国联邦通信委员会所指出的那样，“通信法包括一项反垄断保留条款，因此反垄断法同样有力地适用于受委员会管制的实体。”在认识到这一点后，美国联邦通信委员会认真地制定了2018年恢复互联网自由秩序法案，以便使消费者受到现有的消费者保护和反垄断法律的保护，同时仍为美国通信法第一章中历来一直适用的信息服务轻触制度留出空间。

In so doing, the FCC struck the proper balance between indirect antitrust enforcement and direct regulation under the Communications Act, which incorporates competition policy as the generally applicable regulatory “default” in the absence of specific statutory mandates.

这么做使得美国联邦通信委员会在反垄断的间接执法与美国通信法下的直接监管之间取得了适当的平衡，在缺乏具体法律规定的情况下，这使得竞争政策作为可以普遍适用的“默示”监管政策。