1934 Act’s Anticompetitive Past

[Commentary] Internet neutrality has indisputably inspired small innovative startups, encourages competition and facilitates infinite possibilities of technological innovation.

In AT&T ’s 1910 annual report telecom President Theodore Newton Vail stated: “Effective, aggressive competition and regulation and control are inconsistent with each other, and cannot be had at the same time.” The Communications Act of 1934 granted power to the Federal Communications Commission to regulate telecommunications rates and restrict new “unneeded” competition -- dangerous verbiage in a capitalistic society. Although AT&T did eventually follow behind the government’s legislation, effectively making it the invincible telecom giant it was the past century, AT&T was unable to successfully compete in the growing computer startup age of the 1980s, due in part to its prior lack of competition.