The 1996 Telecommunications Act: ten years later

Like all legislation, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was justified on the basis of the public interest. It was grounded in a general (and incompletely observed) principle, articulated in Title IV: increased competition --especially across traditional platforms -- for provision of both communications and media services among large players, was effectively a good enough measure of the public interest. Consumer choice was an acceptable stand-in for the stake of the American public in its own telecommunications infrastructure -- the neural network of democratic life. By its own standards in Title IV, the 1996 Act failed by not generating intersector competition for similar services. Encouraging public life with media policy can have, in this tempestuous era of digital opportunity, many facets. Americans need to invest in their own democratic culture through their tax dollars and their communications policies. Policymakers can be leaders of that process.