A Critical Evaluation of Telecommunication Act 1996

Telecommunication Act 1996 was considered as a milestone in the history of US telecommunication sector, as it aimed at breaking monopoly in local telecommunication market and creating competition. During last 10 years, the pace of competition in local telephony market has been very slow. Baby Bells still hold a strong dominance and a near monop-oly position. They have even spread their monopoly to long distance market by mergers and acquisitions. This shows the failure of the Act. Local monopoly breaking policy, vertical reintegration, universal service and UNE pricing are the major reasons of this failure. Local loop is a natural monopoly and further investment by multiple companies is not efficient. Idea of universal service should be dropped