Congress and Biden administration have historic opportunity to reset American telecommunications policy.

Congress and the Biden administration have an historic opportunity to reset American telecommunications policy and put it on a more progressive path going forward. In 1996, Congress and the Clinton administration enacted the Telecommunications Act. It’s based on the goal of attaining higher throughput – referred to as “broadband” and “high speed Internet.” The statute become law at a time when it was decidedly sluggish and most Americans were “going online” with dialup modems connected to copper telephone lines designed and built to provide voice phone service in the early to mid-20th century.

A major flaw of the law is it failed to provide a clear policy framework to guide and speed the migration of that copper to fiber to deliver Internet protocol-based voice, data and video services in the 21st. Instead, the policy underpinning the 1996 law was “technology neutrality,” grounded in the hope that market competition would somehow deliver better throughput.

Twenty-five years later in the third decade of the new century as a pandemic has made homes into offices, classrooms and clinics, Americans continue to struggle with slow and unreliable connectivity and access and affordability challenges. Elected representatives are deluged with constituent complaints as policymakers unproductively argue over “broadband” speeds, maps and subsidies. It is exceedingly clear new policy direction is needed to ensure fiber reaches every American doorstep just as copper telephone line did in the previous century and that service is affordable.