Thirty years later, there is still much to learn from our experiences with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That is the focus of our AEI event of February 10, 2026, which will feature former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, who led the agency during its initial stages of implementing the Act, a panel of experts providing multiple viewpoints regarding lessons from the Act, and Senator Deb Fisher (R-NE) describing a way forward.

To set the stage for the event, Mr. Hundt released a paper outlining what he sees as similarities between the problems of telecommunications in 1996 and AI today. In it he supplies an inside-the-state perspective on how government strategy, institutions, and political coalitions operated and what he sees as the benefits derived.

I also released a paper for the event. My paper came out second, but I specifically avoided reviewing Mr. Hundt’s paper as I did not want to simply comment on his thoughts. My view is an outside-the-structure perspective: I joined academia shortly after passage of the Act and from that vantage point observed the importance of deregulation and customer-driven markets.

Despite our different vantage points, our papers have much in common. We share a core diagnosis that the Act was written for industries that were already dissolving: The Act created detailed regulations requiring local telephone companies to help telephony and video rivals just as digitization was collapsing the boundaries between computing, communications, and content. My lesson for lawmakers is that regulating existing business categories is largely counterproductive when technology change is erasing legacy classifications.

On a related note, we both observe that the most consequential outcomes of the Act were not those that policymakers tried hardest to engineer. The Grand Bargain—reciprocal entry of Bell companies and long distance companies into each other’s’ markets—did not work out as planned. Long distance existed as a market only because of legacy regulations. Once these regulations were demolished, companies converged and transformed into integrated wireless and broadband companies providing diverse services. My lesson for lawmakers is competition is a discovery process, not a design exercise.

We both emphasize the central role of technology convergence in shaping the aftermath of the Act. But while Mr. Hundt sees this convergence as a strategic opportunity seized by the government, I view it as an external force, pressing in intensity against outdated regulations before sweeping them away.

The importance of institutions is a common theme between us, but we find different lessons. Mr. Hundt rightly highlights the quality work of his FCC staff, while I emphasize the problems courts, consent decrees, and state and federal regulation created before the Act. Consequently, we reach different conclusions: Mr. Hundt believes the country needs a new regulatory commission for AI. I hold that such an agency would trigger de ja vu: an agency writing rules that cannot help but to freeze in time what would otherwise be fast-changing industries.

Mr. Hundt and I have different takes on the value of how the industries have changed. He sees the government as a critical player in technology choices, and he sees market consolidation—primarily as it manifests in social media and attention markets—as problematic, requiring renewed regulatory investment. My view is different: Absent unmerited favors, such as government protections, businesses growing to unprecedented scales are consequences of customer choice, which should not be hindered by someone else’s regulatory preferences.

Mr. Hundt also emphasizes a theme that I do not address, namely the distributional effects of universal access subsidies and programs like E-Rate. He sees these as integral to the legitimacy and positive legacy of regulation. I, instead, emphasize benefits found in customers, not regulators, choosing which innovations and which providers will succeed, holding to the view that the business of business is to serve customers.

Three decades on, the effects of the Act offer durable lessons in humility. The law mattered most not where it tried to engineer markets, but where it stepped aside and allowed technologies, investments, and consumer choice to reorder and recreate communications industries in unanticipated ways. Innovation is always a surprise.