Telecom Act Has Mixed Legacy of Success: Panel
Thirty years in, the 1996 Telecommunications Act has helped usher in some notable successes, such as increased competition and innovation, but it hasn't made nearly as much progress in guaranteeing universal service, telecom policy experts said in a Broadband Breakfast panel discussion Wednesday.
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New Street's Blair Levin, a nonresident fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the stock price woes over the last five years for most of the big communications companies, including Comcast, Verizon and T-Mobile, show that there's robust competition and constraints on pricing power. John Windhausen, former head of the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, said the level of competition is good, though it could be better.
Consultant Larry Irving, who led NTIA in the Clinton administration, said innovation has been a huge success story for the Telecom Act. But credit can't go to the law alone, he noted, as it collectively played a role alongside the 1992 Cable Act and the adoption of spectrum auctions, as well as global trends.
Universal service has been less of a success story, Irving said. Even lawmakers who had objections got on board a decade ago because bringing broadband to rural and remote locations was a popular cause, but lack of affordable broadband in poor urban areas hasn't had the same effect, Irving said. Windhausen said it's disappointing that the U.S. had a roadmap to universal connectivity in 2010 with the National Broadband Plan, but it was never executed.
Several speakers said that rather than Lifeline, the country's universal service approach should be more like the affordable connectivity program.
Levin, who was chief of staff for former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and involved in Telecom Act implementation, said its biggest impact came in its lower terminating access charges for what were then the emerging services of wireless and internet access. That step helped make them mass-market consumer products, he said.
In addition, Irving said, spectrum auctions "really did jump-start" the wireless industry. The Telecom Act's chief benefit was providing a model for the rest of the world that helped lead to privatization of nationalized communications networks, he said.
Free State Foundation President Randolph May argued that the deregulation promised by the Telecom Act wasn't as robust as it should have been. There's been a need for at least 20 years for a Telecom Act 2.0 to fix the "stovepipe regime" that the 1996 law created, he said, saying the new version should adopt different rules for different categories of services, even though those services are increasingly competing with one another. A new Telecom Act should also constrain the public interest standard in the Communications Act, lessening the FCC's "unfettered discretion," he added.
Irving chided philanthropists and Big Tech for not being as active as they were in the 1980s and '90s in meeting societal needs. When it comes to their obligations to society, such as tackling the looming AI digital divide, "they don't want to hear it."
Windhausen said the U.S. needs to do more for internet utilization as well. The federal government should be using broadband to deliver essential goods and services better, he said. He pointed to the need for programs that help average Americans understand AI's benefits, since most "are actually skeptical [AI] will help them." Irving also warned of a digital divide around AI.