Congress is once again considering a rewrite of the nation’s communications laws—a familiar exercise in trying to govern a fast-moving technological landscape with slow-moving statutes. The Communications Act, which created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and governs everything from broadcasting to broadband, was last substantially updated in 1996. Even then, the rewrite was already behind the times.
The 1996 overhaul was built for a world whose time had passed: landlines, dial-up connections, and distinct industry silos. The 1996 Act opened legacy markets to competition and expanded subsidies for them. Cable and telephony were becoming internet. Entirely new industries were becoming video providers. Wireless and satellite technologies blurred boundaries further. The law, rooted in technological distinctions, was a misfit for technologies that refused to stay in their lanes.
That mismatch is at the heart of Congress’s current effort. Lawmakers from both parties agree that the statute no longer reflects how Americans communicate. Broadband, 5G, streaming services and satellite networks dominate—at least for now—yet the legal framework still carries assumptions from a pre-internet era. But this is not simply a story of legislative failure. It is a reminder of a deeper truth: Innovation is inherently unpredictable. Laws designed on assumptions built on lessons from yesteryear will almost always hinder tomorrow.
Still, the pressures for action are real and growing. National security concerns have intensified, particularly regarding foreign-made telecommunications equipment and the resilience of digital infrastructure. Lawmakers are also reconsidering Section 230, the provision that shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content, amid debates over misinformation, censorship and the effects of social media on children. Meanwhile, longstanding programs such as the Universal Service Fund—designed to subsidize rural service providers—are under strain as their funding base erodes.
Legal uncertainty is adding urgency. Recent Supreme Court decisions limiting regulatory agencies’ abilities to form their own interpretations of ambiguous statutes have raised questions about how far the FCC can go in adapting old laws to new realities. For example, net neutrality regulations, once ping ponging through back-and-forth regulatory interpretation, cannot be created without explicit congressional direction. At the same time, emerging technologies—from artificial intelligence to space-based communications—present challenges that lawmakers in 1996 could scarcely have imagined.
These tensions were on display at a March 26 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, titled “The Telecommunications Act of 1996: 30 Years Later.” Lawmakers and witnesses largely agreed on one point: The current framework is outdated. But they also revealed the complexity of deciding what should replace it.
According to a memo prepared by the majority staff, the core issues confronting Congress include whether to abandon the law’s longstanding “siloed” regulatory structure in favor of a more technology-neutral approach. There are also unresolved debates over whether broadband should be subject to federal regulation, how to sustain relevant universal service programs, whether Section 230 should be rewritten, and how legacy media ownership rules should adapt or be dropped given the preeminence of digital platforms. Even areas of relative success, such as wireless spectrum policy, raise questions about how to maintain momentum while updating the broader framework.
What emerges from this debate is not simply a list of policy problems, but a recurring institutional challenge. Congress is being asked to modernize a law for a digital ecosystem that continues to evolve in unpredictable ways. The risk is not just that lawmakers will get the details wrong. It is that any detailed framework will be overtaken by events.
That is the context for the current effort to rewrite the Communications Act: a recognition that the law no longer fits the world it seeks to govern—and an acknowledgment, whether explicit or not, that any replacement will face the same fundamental constraint. The future will arrive in a different fashion than Congress can legislate.
This is the first of three columns examining rewriting the Communications Act. The next will explore how the hearing’s witnesses viewed the role of government in the digital economy. The third will examine the institutional challenges before Congress.