Twenty five years ago this week, President Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It was an historic moment for a number of reasons not the least of which was that the 1996 Act codified Universal Service as the principle that all Americans, regardless of where they live, should have access to communications services. It was the cornerstone for policies that were key to making telephone service available, comparable and affordable and it’s been gratifying watching that evolution to broadband services over the course of time. But I digress….
The real work on the Telecom Act of 96 began years prior when Congress was was mulling through the Modified Final Judgement, the 1982 consent degree concerning AT&T and its subsidiaries which led into further reforms that were needed just as the Age of the Internet was dawning.
Memories certainly dim from those days, weeks, months and years that were part of the process but I will never forget things like spending hours in former Senator Dorgan’s office with members of The Farm Team, the bipartisan group of staffers who were devoted to find a path forward for rural Americans to ensure affordable communications services. His conference room walls were covered in a marvelous “faux” grass texture so it was known as the Mumba Hut and numerous cups of coffee and carry out meals. Like an NTCA member from Texas lending me his predecessor to cell phone, bag phone, to lug around during the last few weeks of debate to be available at all times. Calls late at night discussing the ranks of priorities like toll rate averaging vs. whatever was top of AT&T’s list and the epic meetings sitting in the late Senator McCain’s office and getting lectured by a group of Senators on why we needed to “back off” on our demands. NTCA members did a yeoman’s job of trekking to Washington DC to share their story, their challenges and their vision for the role they played in connecting their rural communities.
The celebration was sweet and the platform was built for future reforms that aided the deployment for rural America that we see today. Our latest annual broadband survey shows that nearly 70 percent of NTCA member customers are connected via fiber to the premises up from 58 percent in 2018 and even with the ongoing pandemic, our broadband providers have gone above and beyond to serve their communities.
When the Act was signed into law on February 8, 1996, it was the first – and only – bill signing ceremony that I had the honor of being invited to. But as luck and bad timing would have it, it was also in the middle of an NTCA Annual Meeting but duty called and it never seemed to have occurred to me that I should have figured out a way to manage airplane schedules to make both work. Nevertheless, I enjoy seeing the photos popping up on everyone’s Facebook feed 25 years later from the Library of Congress where it was held, likely to fit in the army of folks who were engaged in the effort, and still think back to having had the honor and battle scars of being at the table with NTCA members for such a landmark piece of legislation.