Alan Davidson, the new NTIA head overseeing federal spending on broadband, says his agency will soon launch a review of competition in the mobile app ecosystem
but he's also talking about helping set administration policy around app stores and privacy. https://www.axios.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The announcement puts Alan Davidson's NTIA on two tracks at once. The agency is already the steward of the $42.5B broadband deployment routed through Commerce rather than the FCC, and Davidson is now adding app store competition and privacy to its policy portfolio. The review he previews is the opening move of a process that ran through a formal request for public comment on Android and iOS store policies and web app developer friction two months later.
First-order effects
- Apple and Google become the subjects of a formal federal competition review of their app store policies, with web app developers invited to document the constraints they face.
- The NTIA stakes a claim to app store and privacy policy inside the administration, expanding beyond its broadband and spectrum remit under Davidson.
Second-order effects
- The review feeds the administration's policy apparatus: by early 2023 the NTIA concluded that Apple and Google are app store "gatekeepers" and urged legislation to improve competition and choice, giving congressional allies a government-authored basis for app store bills.
Third-order effects
- The episode establishes the NTIA as a recurring venue for platform-competition findings that outlast any single review — though its agenda is administration-dependent, as shown by the later plan to nominate Arielle Roth, a critic of the broadband program Davidson's agency ran, to lead it.
The trend: The NTIA is evolving from a broadband and spectrum agency into a standing federal voice on platform gatekeeping, with app store competition as its first sustained test case.