That firm size tells us little about propensity to innovate is nicely illustrated by contrasting AT&T and Verizon with Amazon. AT&T and Verizon have rightly been criticized for what looks like intentional underinvestment in broadband, made possible by their oligopoly power. Comes now Amazon, planning to invest billions to provide global broadband access via satellite, and Google, investing billions to build new undersea internet cables.
The big can do wrong, but they can also do right.
There is a Schumpeterian lesson here too. Schumpeter argued that market power is always in jeopardy from outside the market, and that is in evidence here. Who would have thought a few years ago that an online retailer would one day plan to use the profits generated from dominance in its own market to challenge the vicious telecom oligopoly?
It should also be clear that a broken up Amazon or Google, an Amazon or Google confined to one business, one market, and one level of the supply chain, would have neither the capital, nor the ambition, nor the legal right to attack the telecoms.
It is not size that is a problem, but the misuse of size, and the remedy for misuse is to encourage the good uses and suppress the bad. Which is to say: not to break up, but to regulate.