US (country regulation overview)

The US telecoms market is one of the most deregulated in the world. Nevertheless, there are key differences between the regulatory landscapes in Europe and the US in terms of NGA and functional separation, due to the different market structures. The US regulator, the FCC, currently feels there is no need to introduce regulatory interventions at the access level because of end-to-end infrastructure competition between the telecoms incumbents and cable operators. Therefore, fibre access is not included in the unbundling obligation imposed by the FCC. This regulatory approach gives an incentive to incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) to upgrade their local networks, because once incumbent operators have upgraded their access networks to NGA, they are no longer obliged to offer access to other operators,

The net neutrality debate began in the US. Since the new leadership at the FCC (headed by the Democratic Chairman, Julius Genachowski) was established in 2009, the FCC has attempted to enshrine net neutrality principles in law, triggering debates on net neutrality around the world. Nevertheless, the variety of comments received as part of the FCC’s consultation process on the subject highlighted the great disagreements which exist among stakeholders, creating uncertainty about net neutrality for the time being.

The US mobile market is fragmented, partly as a legacy of the process for allocating the first personal communications services (PCS) licenses, but is still dominated by four major operators. The need for additional spectrum is being driven by customers' bandwidth demands, particularly for mobile broadband services, which are growing significantly.