If Congress rewrites the Communications Act, the most consequential question will not be technical. It will be philosophical: How much should government constrain the choices of consumers, companies, workers and investors in the digital economy?
That question came into focus at a March 26 hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, where four witnesses—former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, INCOMPAS’s Chip Pickering, R Street’s Adam Thierer, and Free Press’s Matthew Wood—agreed on the problem but not the answers: The current law is outdated, and Americans should have access to world-leading communications technologies. But what government roles might make things better, or worse, remain deeply contested.
Take the issue of universal service—the long-standing effort to subsidize communications services, primarily in rural or low-income areas. Today’s system still reflects its origins in the monopoly telephone era, when cross-subsidies and political bargains funded rural telephone companies and some low-income households. Modern programs, including the Universal Service Fund and the more recent Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, have updated that model in some respects. But the debate at the hearing highlighted a potentially deeper divide: Should government focus on subsidizing networks, or on helping consumers afford services? The witnesses tended to prefer the latter as the proper focus. But political priorities—from incorporating climate considerations to restricting “woke” priorities—continue to shape how those subsidies are delivered.
Those same tensions appear in debates over broadband regulation. Most witnesses pointed to the success of the largely deregulatory approach that followed the 1996 Act, pointing to its impacts on competition, innovation, and investment, particularly in wireless technologies. But one argued that the FCC should have greater authority over broadband—even if that authority is initially used sparingly. But this raises a familiar concern: Once granted, regulatory authority rarely remains unused. Calls to ensure “just and reasonable” service can quickly evolve into calls to control services and prices. To illustrate, this witness said the FCC should not regulate prices, yet about half of his written testimony conveyed criticisms of existing broadband pricing.
Content regulation exposed another fault line. Today’s communications ecosystem rests on very different rules for similar services. Broadcasters using public airwaves remain subject to public-interest obligations and the resulting political oversight. Online platforms, by contrast, operate largely under the First Amendment and Section 230, which shields them from liability for user-generated content. Witnesses broadly agreed that government should not regulate lawful speech online and that the FCC has no role in redefining Section 230. But many also noted the growing inconsistency: Consumers increasingly view broadcast and online content as substitutes, yet the regulatory treatment of those services remains sharply different.
Here, too, the disagreement was not about the problems but about the answers. One suggestion was for Congress to give the FCC broader authority to harmonize regulation across platforms and technologies. But this could invite regulatory whiplash—with rules shifting as political control of the agency changes—so others urged Congress to set clearer, more durable deregulatory policies in statutes.
Underlying these debates is a recurring tension. Communications policy is no longer just about networks. It is about how much control government should exercise over a complex, fast-moving ecosystem in which innovation, consumer choice, and investment are tightly intertwined. Efforts to expand access, ensure fairness, or promote competition inevitably involve trade-offs—and often involve constraining some decisions to influence others.
That is one reason why rewriting the Communications Act is so difficult. The challenge is not simply updating outdated provisions. It is deciding the government’s roles in shaping outcomes in markets. For some, this decision is a matter of faith in central control versus individual initiative. For others, it is a matter of risk aversion—accepting a certain yet subpar future, or embracing the uncertainty that goes with being world leaders.
This is the second of three columns examining reforming the Communications Act. The next will consider the challenges of aligning institutions with a dynamic economy.