Telecommunication

When my phone stopped working last month during the latest calamitous network outage to hit the US, I assumed it was that pesky Amazon cloud POP in North Virginia playing up again.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 turned 30 years old on February 8, 2026. As one of the principal staffers responsible for drafting the 1996 Act, I am simultaneously proud of our efforts, disappointed with some of its failings, and frustrated by the inconsistent implementation by regulators, yet pleased with our overall progress. The Telecom Act, though far from perfect, helped to usher in a competitive climate that has allowed the U.S. to innovate and lead the world in high-tech.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 sought to replace monopoly protection with competition in an industry shaped by decades of regulation. While the Telecom Act removed legal barriers, many of its most detailed provisions—particularly those designed to manage entry and preserve service-based categories—failed to produce the industry structure policymakers envisioned. This paper from the American Enterprise Institute argues that these outcomes reflect a broader lesson about regulating evolving technologies.

Thirty years ago, Washington did something remarkable. In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act—a sweeping rewrite of communications law that reshaped an entire sector of the economy. It was bipartisan. It was forward-looking. And perhaps most striking in hindsight: it showed restraint. The law that helped set the stage for the internet age barely mentioned the internet at all. That wasn’t an oversight. It was wisdom. Back then, technology meant a landline on the kitchen wall, a TV with rabbit ears, maybe a pager on your belt if you were important enough.

Retail voice telephone service customers are served by two wireline technologies – end-user switched access lines and interconnected VoIP subscriptions – and by mobile wireless subscriptions. In December 2024, there were 16 million end-user switched access lines in service, 64 million interconnected VoIP subscriptions, and 391 million mobile subscriptions, for a total of 471 million retail voice telephone service connections in the United States. Between 2021 and 2024, interconnected VoIP subscriptions declined at a compound annual growth rate of 2.1%, mobile voice subscriptions increased a

On November 18, 2025, Sen. Maria Cantwell sent Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr a letter expressing her strong opposition to his effort to roll back the FCC's ruling to secure telecommunications networks specifically put into place after last year’s Chinese-state-sponsored Salt Typhoon incursion—one of the worst cyberattacks in history. On January 21, Chairman Carr wrote that the FCC C has worked directly with carriers who have agreed to make extensive and coordinated efforts to harden their networks against a range of cyber intrusions.

AT&T released financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025. Highlights for Q4 include:

• 283,000 AT&T Fiber net adds and 221,000 AT&T Internet Air net adds, representing more than half a million combined advanced home internet net additions for the second consecutive quarter
• Consumer Wireline fiber revenues of $2.2 billion, up 13.6 percent year over year

Highlights for the full year include:

The Internet protocol (IP) interconnection transition generates unavoidable costs for intercarrier compensation (ICC)-dependent rural carriers, and deferring those costs to “future proceedings” predictably leads to pressure for permanent new Universal Service Fund (USF) support. The Technology Policy Institute proposes a Voluntary IP Service Transition Auction (VISTA) that converts those implicit future liabilities into explicit, time-limited transition payments.

The European Commission wants to make it easier for telecommunications operators to upgrade Europe’s critical networks by giving them more access to spectrum and phasing out copper networks over the next decade. The European Union’s executive branch said it would introduce a mandatory phase-out of copper networks for EU member states and a transition to advanced networks between 2030 and 2035 under the Digital Networks Act—a planned piece of legislation unveiled in January 2026.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved the transfer of control of Frontier's California operations to Verizon, subject to enforceable conditions, ongoing monitoring, and consumer protections. The decision includes requirements intended to: