"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."<p>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...<p>I'll also be interested to see if this impacts mobile internet.
Hm, maybe the radio stations will stop needing to bleep things out. :)<p>> Telecommunications firms also argue that a lack of legislation has not stifled competition among Internet companies.<p>Yeah, it's the granted monopolies and anti-competitive behavior that did that.<p>> "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.<p>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.