The Telecommunication Act Of 1996 Essay

§ Long distance - Due to regulatory restrictions, Verizon was once not allowed to offer long distance services in the former Bell Atlantic territories. These restrictions have been eased and Verizon has been approved to provide long distance in 11 of the 14 former Bell Atlantic states. The

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934. This Act was a major stepping stone towards the future of telecommunications, since this was the first time that the Internet was included in broadcasting and spectrum allotment. One of the primary goals of the law (Title III specifically) was to let anyone enter any communications business “to let any communications businesses compete in any market against any other." Also, the new Telecommunications Act allowed the FCC, and Congress, to "update" the old - and outdated - Telecommunications Act of 1934.

The Canadian cellular service’s industry is comprised of approximately 15 cellular providers. These operators employ approximately 16,000 individuals and generate more than CAN$10B in revenues annually, which represents almost 30 percent of the Canadian telecommunications market. The Canadian wireless industry has been experiencing an annual growth rate three times that of any other Canadian telecommunications sector. This is very significant as Canada is in the top 10% in the world for broadband penetration.

This new law will change the rules for competition and regulation in the communications industry.

Through expansion, technological improvements and more investment leading to continuous network and product upgrade, should lead Verizon to better compete in international services. With emerging competition from countries like China, it is a matter of survival to act or not.

In response to those weaknesses, the Federal Trade Commission was created and given authority to enforce the acts’ provisions and “protect consumers by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices… and accomplishing this without unduly burdening legitimate business activity” (“About the FTC”). The Federal Trade Commission’s responsibilities included preventing and dissolving monopolies, bringing civil law suits against violators of the law, and monitoring the business community for violations of law (Davis). Since its creation, rules such as the Telemarketing Sales Rule, Pay-Per-Call Rule, and Equal Credit Opportunity Act were placed under the Commission’s jurisdiction, increasing their magnitude. However, in the Constitution Congress is given power, “[t]o regulate

Before the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, existed, there was the Federal Radio Commission. To go into more detail, though, regulating communications in the United States has been going on since the Radio Act of 1912. This was mainly so the military, emergency responders, police, and entertainment companies could get their signals out over the airwaves to the right audiences without any interference. The Radio Act of 1912 established a commission to designate which airwaves belonged to who: those for public use and those for various commercial users. The Federal Radio Commission was established in 1926 to handle the country’s radio needs, which were becoming more and more complex. It was in 1934 that Congress passed the Communications Act. This replaced the Federal Radio Commission with the Federal Communications Act. What was a huge change from the previous regulations in place was putting telephone communications under the FCC’s control. The FCC was also established to help break up monopolies over communications that developed in 1934, most notably, breaking up NBC, which eventually spawned ABC.

With the expansion of digital and online marketplaces, the FCC’s responsibility to promote free market principles and business has never been more important. The order goes on to describe how it will use its’ legal authority to promote free market expansion, “We marshal all of these sources of authority toward a common statutorily-supported goal: to protect and promote Internet openness as platform for competition, free expression and innovation; a driver of economic growth; and an engine of the virtuous cycle of broadband deployment” (FCC, 120). By promoting open internet and the virtuous cycle, business and digital marketplaces have a secure and reliable medium to buy and sell goods, and promote business and other start-ups. The commission’s legal authority is derived from section 706 (FCC, 121). The order also aims at modernizing Title II, an act that helps promote investment and business activity (FCC,

The FCC administers all broadcasting and imposes the requirements for wire and wireless communications through its rules and regulations. The archetypes for the FCC’s broadcasting regulations were formed before the Communications Act of 1934 by its predecessor the Federal Radio Commission. Unequivocal jurisdiction over broadcast was not granted to the federal government to exclusively regulate broadcast but a year prior to the establishment of the FCC the Supreme Court inferred it as explicit and prohibited the states from obstructing its authority. Title I of the 1934 Act defines many of the FCC's powers related to broadcasting. The title states that the Act “applies to all interstate and foreign communications by wire or radio.” The FCC has jurisdiction in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions such as Puerto Rico,

The FCC’s move will allow companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to charge internet companies for speedier access to consumers and to block outside services they don’t like. The change also axes a host of consumer protections, including privacy requirements and rules barring unfair practices that gave consumers an avenue to pursue complaints about price gouging.

Yet at the same time, these two sets of companies compete for customers, creating a glaring conflict of interest. Whilst these issues seemed to be resolved by the middle of the twentieth century, the advent of the internet introduced a whole new set of problems. The term net neutrality, first coined by Tim Wu, Professor of the Columbia University Law School in 2003, came to represent a question that had long been perceived as being of relatively little concern – is unfettered access to the internet a right, or a privilege? (Cheng and Bandyopadhay 2011: 60) (Greenstein 2007: 61, 85) The debate around internet regulation and net neutrality first gained traction in 2002, when the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) controversially ruled that broadband internet was to be classed as an information service rather as a telecommunications service, and thus made it exempt from a considerable range of content and conduct regulations that it would otherwise have been subject to. For those Americans, as exemplified by organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who saw the internet as a space of uninhibited free expression that needed to be protected from the influence of corporate meddling, this decision was very frustrating. As promoted by Wu and others, net neutrality came to represent the belief that ‘internet data packets should move nondiscriminatorily’ – that is, the data (‘packets’ essentially being a technical

I. BACKGROUND: CelluComm and GMCT and the Industry AT&T’s Bell Laboratories cellular telephone networking innovation had enabled several cellular network operators to get licenses from the FCC to operate in separate license territories right about the same time AT&T was broken up in early 1980s. These operators were either companies like Cellular Communication Services, Inc. (CelluComm) or small entrepreneurs who had won license territories through the lottery system. CelluComm’s  president  and  founder  Ric  Jenkins  was  known  for  being  an  aggressive businessman  who  had  extended  it  to  a  200  million  dollar  enterprise  ranking  in  the  top  20  of  the industry.  Key  to

The Communications Act of 1934, as amended (the "Communications Act"), and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations and policies also significantly impact Comcast’s decision on the company's businesses, including cable system and broadcast station ownership, video services customer rates, carriage of broadcast television stations, broadcast programming content and advertising, package of programming to customers and other providers, access to cable system channels by franchising authorities and other parties, the use of utility poles and conduits, and the offering of high-speed internet and phone services (Marketline, 2013). Failure of Comcast's businesses to comply with the laws and regulations may result in administrative enforcement actions, fines and civil and criminal liability. In as much that laws, policies and regulations are much stricter in the U.S. this would present significant risks to the company's businesses which may affect its operating

     In today’s telecommunication market there is a lot of competition by industry giants such as Sprint,

The business case presented focuses on insatiable demand amongst a growing population for a service built on dilapidated, poorly maintained infrastructure, against a backdrop of government deregulation in the telecoms sector. As of 1992, there were a mere 78k telephone lines for the 27m people living in 4.7m households (a population set to double over the coming 24 years), with users suffering success rates of just 25%. Demand was forecast to grow to 500k subscribers by 1996. The recent deregulation of the telecoms sector (via the break-up of TPTC into TPC and TTCL) and the formation of a regulator (TCC) had