ABSTRACT

Driven by the industry’s experience with divestiture as well as years of Congressional failure to create substantial change, passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, 2 and the many resulting FCC (Federal Communications Commission) rulemakings that followed, created the most important policy watershed in decades. The 1996 legislation substantially amended portions of the 1934 Communications Act which remained the baseline law. 3 After so many failed attempts, Congress defined new rules of marketplace competition while at the same time seeking—not always successfully—to limit government’s long-term regulatory role. For a variety of reasons explored here and in the following chapter, however, the law would not turn out to be quite the landmark its proponents had hoped.