Preserving Competition: Economic Analysis, Legal Standards and Microsoft

Cass, Ronald A. and Hylton, Keith N., "Preserving Competition: Economic Analysis, Legal Standards and Microsoft" (1999). George Mason Law Review, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1999

Abstract:

In a recent symposium issue of the George Mason Law Review, Steven Salop and R. Craig Romaine use the Microsoft litigation as a focus for discussion of antitrust law. Salop and Romaine argue that each of the allegations against Microsoft could constitute evidence of a design by Microsoft to reduce competition and to preserve or extend monopoly power. They argue as well that the right legal standard to apply in monopolization cases is a "competitive effects" test that balances the benefits and harms of the monopolist's conduct. This article exposes problems with their approach, explains why it departs from current antitrust standards, and urges an approach consistent with current standards.

Facts on voip

• In general, phone service via VoIP costs less than equivalent service from traditional sources. Some cost savings are due to using a single network to carry voice and data, especially where users have existing under-utilized network capacity they can use for VoIP at no additional cost.
• Some broadband connections may have less than desirable reliability. Where IP packets are lost or delayed at any point in the network between VoIP users, there will be a momentary drop-out of voice. This is more noticeable in highly congested networks and/or where there is long distances and/or interworking between end points.
• Implementation challenges Because IP does not provide any mechanism to ensure that data packets are delivered in sequential order, or provide any Quality of Service guarantees, VoIP implementations may face problems dealing with latency (especially if satellite circuits are involved), and jitter. They are faced with the problem of restructuring streams of received IP packets, which can come in any order and have packets delayed or missing, to ensure that the ensuing audio stream maintains a proper time consistency. Another main challenge is routing VoIP traffic to traverse certain firewalls and NAT. Intermediary devices called Session Border Controllers (SBC) are often used to achieve this, though some proprietary systems such as Skype traverse firewall and NAT without a SBC by using users' computers as super node servers to route other people's calls.

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