Event Title
The Communications Act Policy Toward Competition: A Failure to Communicate
Location
Duke Law School
Start Date
20-1-1978 8:45 AM
End Date
20-1-1978 10:00 AM
Description
This Article will examine these questions about the governing law of telecommunications and compunications. Part II describes the development of telecommunications regulation from the invention of the telephone in 1876 through the enactment of the Communications Act of 1934, focusing on the evolution of the federal regulatory structure and the substantive law which it has applied. Beginning with this basic historical framework, Parts III and IV undertake to outline and then analyze the two principal competing views regarding the mandate of the Communications Act toward the telecommunications market structure. Part In discusses the prevailing view that the FCC is free to exercise an essentially boundless discretion in overseeing telecommunications developments. Part IV explores a novel interpretation of the Act, advanced with increasing frequency by the established carriers and state regulators, which identifies provisions in the statute that would bar the FCC from permitting competition which threatens duplication of, or economic or technical harm to, the services and facilities of the monopoly shared by AT&T and the independent telephone carriers. Part V then draws conclusions about these two alternatives, suggesting that the single reliable lesson to be learned from studying the Communications Act is that Congress has failed to provide any useful guidance to regulators and courts faced with the critical job of allocating opportunities in a fluid, rapidly evolving compunications environment.
Related Paper
G. Hamilton Loeb, The Communications Act Policy Toward Competition: A Failure to Communicate, 1978 Duke Law Journal 1-56 (1978)
Available at: http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dlj/vol27/iss1/1The Communications Act Policy Toward Competition: A Failure to Communicate
Duke Law School
This Article will examine these questions about the governing law of telecommunications and compunications. Part II describes the development of telecommunications regulation from the invention of the telephone in 1876 through the enactment of the Communications Act of 1934, focusing on the evolution of the federal regulatory structure and the substantive law which it has applied. Beginning with this basic historical framework, Parts III and IV undertake to outline and then analyze the two principal competing views regarding the mandate of the Communications Act toward the telecommunications market structure. Part In discusses the prevailing view that the FCC is free to exercise an essentially boundless discretion in overseeing telecommunications developments. Part IV explores a novel interpretation of the Act, advanced with increasing frequency by the established carriers and state regulators, which identifies provisions in the statute that would bar the FCC from permitting competition which threatens duplication of, or economic or technical harm to, the services and facilities of the monopoly shared by AT&T and the independent telephone carriers. Part V then draws conclusions about these two alternatives, suggesting that the single reliable lesson to be learned from studying the Communications Act is that Congress has failed to provide any useful guidance to regulators and courts faced with the critical job of allocating opportunities in a fluid, rapidly evolving compunications environment.
Comments
This event was not recorded.