to issue an exclusive cable franchise. As Posner reasoned, "This duplication may lead not only to higher prices to cable television subscribers, at least in the short run, but also to higher costs to other users of the public ways, who must compete with the cable television companies for access to them. An alternative procedure is to pick the most efficient competitor at the outset, give him a monopoly, and extract from him in exchange a commitment to provide reasonable service at reasonable rates" (Omega Satellite Prods. Co. V. City of Indianapolis, 694 F.2d 119, 126 (7th Cir. 1982)). Other commentators have challenged these claims, arguing that overbuilding leads to lower, not higher, prices (see, e.g., Hazlett 1990; Levin and Meisel 1991). However questionable this conclusion might have been at the time, any claims of ruinous competition have been undercut by the emergence of apparently sustainable intermodal competition from DBS. Claims of ruinous competition appear to be even less sustainable with respect to broadband. Academic studies suggest that competition among multiple last-mile broadband providers is viable in most of the country (Faulhaber and Hogendorn 2000). The FCC has concluded, moreover, that DSL and cable modem providers are already engaged in vigorous competition and that the continuing growth of the market is likely to support entry by additional broadband technologies (FCC 2005d). The large investments currently being made in 3G, WiMax, WiFi, broad- band over powerline, and other alternative broadband technologies underscore the widespread nature of the belief in the viability of alternative broadband platforms. Other scholars offer a more limited argument in favor of managed competition through asymmetric regulation, in which some portions of the industry are subject to regulation, whereas others are not. For example, former FCC Chief Economist Joseph Farrell has argued that asymmetric regulation would permit experimenta- tion with different policy approaches. Farrell acknowledges that asym