

What could go wrong?  congress to update 1996 Telecomm Act - yanowitz
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/technology/25broadband.html?ref=internet&pagewanted=print

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pwhelan
"Congress has little time left on this session’s calendar. And it took more
than five years to produce the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which itself was
the first major overhaul of telecommunications law since the Communications
Act of 1934."

I don't understand why it has taken so long for something that has changed so
drastically and is vital to our economy to addressed. Hopefully they have some
idea of where they are going with this...

I'll also be interested to see if this impacts mobile internet.

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tbrownaw
Hm, maybe the radio stations will stop needing to bleep things out. :)

> Telecommunications firms also argue that a lack of legislation has not
> stifled competition among Internet companies.

Yeah, it's the granted monopolies and anti-competitive behavior that did that.

> "The F.C.C.’s legal authority should be decided by the Congress itself, and
> not by applying to the Internet a set of onerous rules designed for a
> different technology, a different situation, and a different era," he [James
> Cicconi, a senior executive vice president at AT&T] said.

Um, I'm pretty sure those rules were designed for there being a (local)
monopoly on what we're calling the "last mile" these days, rather than for any
specific technology used. They make just as much sense as ever.

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Locke1689
The editorializing in the title is unnecessary. Please reflect the article's
title only next time.

