Telecommunications Act of 1996 - Definition and Overview

This article or section should include material from Telecom Reform Act

Telecommunications Act of 1996 is the largest major revision of the law governing how communications industries are regulated in the United States, since the Communications Act of 1934.

The industries directly affected by the law include: over-the-air television and radio stations, cable television operators, satellite broadcasters, wireline telephone companies (local and long distance), wireless telephone companies, and others.

The general intent of the revision is summarized, among experts, as deregulation and promotion of facility-based competition. Many agree that the Telecom Act has not fulfilled those goals well. Yet there are contradictory accounts as to how and why it has failed, what should be done.

Title V was the Communications Decency Act, the child protection portions of which were subsequently struck down, leaving the legal protection against liability for the words of others.