December A Landmark Month for Communications Policy

This week marked the 100th anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, the 1913 agreement between American Telephone & Telegraph and the US government that settled the government’s antitrust investigation into the phone company, and organized the burgeoning system of telephone networks into a regulated monopoly structure for the next 71 years.

It’s an understatement to say that technology has changed drastically in the century since Kingsbury. The 21st-century communications ecosystem was on full display when Reps Greg Walden (R-OR) and Fred Upton (R-MI) announced their intent to revisit the Communications Act in 2015. The two representatives made their announcement via Google Hangout, a sign of how far communications technology has advanced since the Act was last updated in 1996. As technological convergence continues to blur the line between content company and service provider, and as consumers continue their march away from copper landlines toward IP services, Reps Walden and Upton’s initiative is a welcome development. If live video chat is going to become the dominant mode of communications, then customers are going to need a lot more spectrum to carry their signals.