ABSTRACT
Given the historical underpinnings of broadband policy, this chapter provides a brief overview of telecommunications policy in the United States starting with the Communications Act of 1934 and ending with the National Broadband Plan (NBP) introduced in 2010. This chapter also provides an extended discussion of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 with a focus on the more controversial sections of the legislation, including an overview of the origins of the ongoing municipal broadband debate. Finally, this chapter concludes with a brief overview of current federal initiatives to improve access to broadband service and broadband data that include the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP), the Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP) and the National Broadband Map (NBM). First generation of universal service primary goal was to unify the network so that all telephone subscribers could communicate with one another. Thus, current policy discussions about universal service are focused around mechanisms for translating support for telephone networks to broadband networks.
