Data centers have made every week Infrastructure Week. While we talk about their need for electricity and, to a lesser extent, water, we seem to forget the network connectivity these data centers also depend on.

That oversight reflects a broader disconnect in communications policy. 

You’d be hard-pressed to find many people who don’t intuitively consider the internet essential infrastructure, and their broadband service an essential utility. The last time Congress comprehensively addressed how we should govern the communications landscape was the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Thirty years ago, we went on the internet. Now, we live there. Ninety percent of American adults use the internet daily. Schools, health care providers, public benefits, job applications, and a good share of our relationships now run on broadband.

Yet as Scott Jordan, the Federal Communications Commission's former chief technologist, wrote last month, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 "barely covers the communications services that Americans actually use." Broadband customers enjoy none of the common carrier protections that once applied to the landline telephone service high-speed internet replaced. Mobile data sits largely outside the statute's reach. 

We need a new law that governs communications as we use them now, not as they existed when America Online told us, “You’ve got mail.”

While technology has changed, many of the issues the Telecom Act was intended to address have not. Profound questions about universal service, competition, affordability, nondiscrimination, interconnection, privacy, and the responsible stewardship of public resources still need to be answered. 

We have spent decades stretching old legal categories to fit new facts. We need a new compact.

Two premises should guide our work. First, the internet is essential infrastructure, like roads, water, and electricity. Our lives run on this essential infrastructure, and we should all be able to use it. Anyone who has tried to enroll a child in school, see a doctor, or file their taxes without a reliable internet connection already knows this. Yet, broadband networks still don’t reach roughly 10.5 million people. And even where networks do reach, the cost of internet access often remains a barrier for many millions more. Competition is largely an illusion for consumers who still have only one or two real choices for high-speed internet.

Second, essential infrastructure carries public obligations. Infrastructure creates value by what it enables, and networks grow more valuable as more people join them. A policy framework organized only around the transaction between provider and subscriber will keep missing that collective value. A new compact must address what kind of communications system we collectively need, and the characteristics necessary to create the greatest value for our society that depends on it.

The answer has three parts. 

1. We need better networks: ubiquitous, reliable, resilient, secure, open, and interoperable. Policymakers can be technology-neutral without being technology-blind. As copper networks are retired, modernization must mean better service and should not become an excuse for degradation. The more we rely on digital networks, the more devastating the potential costs of disconnection. We need a compact that ensures resilience and security are part of the public obligation that must accompany essential infrastructure.

2. We need better markets: dynamic, innovative, and serving everyone. When low-income households downgrade or disconnect their service because of subscription costs,  we essentially levy a  “bandwidth tax.” We make school, work, accessing public benefits, the multitude of tasks that add up to adult life, that much harder and out of reach.

3. We need better institutions: capable, accountable, and trusted, to oversee powerful companies and adapt as technology changes. Effective oversight requires institutions with the expertise and capacity to understand increasingly complex networks, and the credibility and capacity to act when necessary. A new compact should strengthen the institutions charged with protecting the public interest while ensuring they remain transparent, accountable, and worthy of the nation’s trust.

None of this can be done by stretching the 1996 Act a little further. That law aimed to oversee the transition from a telephone monopoly to a competitive marketplace, with categories that made sense then. The internet has dissolved those categories. Governing the internet through policies designed for telephone carriers, cable operators, and broadcasters is like regulating highways under rules designed for horse-drawn carriages.

Congress has done this before. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle wrote a Communications Act in 1934 for the age of radio. They overhauled it in 1996 for the age of cable and the mobile phone. Thirty years on, our world has fundamentally changed. It’s time to write a new law that addresses today's essential digital infrastructure.

Dr. Revati Prasad is the Executive Director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2026. Redistribution of this email publication - both internally and externally - is encouraged if it includes this copyright statement.

For subscribe/unsubscribe info, please email headlinesATbentonDOTorg

Kevin Taglang
Executive Editor, Communications-related Headlines
Benton Institute
for Broadband & Society
1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214
Wilmette, IL 60091
847-220-4531
headlines AT benton DOT org

Share this edition:

Broadband Delivers Opportunities and Strengthens Communities