The communication sector is one of the most dynamic and crucial areas in the governance space in the world. It has the power of delivering information to citizens in many countries and thus influences their decision-making process regarding a particular issue ((BPL):, 2005). The way information is relayed importance as the message itself. A lot of people in the world depend on telecommunication to know how to trade, politics, and social aspects are being governed. Since the industrial revolution that led to the invention of the radio, the telephone, and internet, the world has become a global village where people interact and exchange ideas at the press of a button. International relations have widened, and territorial boundaries have been broken, and that has led to diversity ((U.S.) " States, 2008).
Unregulated power will turn catastrophic and become a weapon of destruction. For that reason, the government had to come up with ways of regulating the freedom enjoyed by communication mediums such as social media, television, radio, and the internet among others (Creech, 2007). There is the need for people conveying information to the people to have a social responsibility if the data given is distorted or false news. For the television and radio programs, there is the need of choosing their content and campaign for parental control on programs that have adult content. Media houses had to be regulated and have a body that they report to before airing their programs. That could include government licensing for all media houses and signing of an agreement to abide by the terms stipulated by the government. This paper delves into the differences between the Communication Act of 1934 and that of 1996 (FCC., 2013).
Historical overview of the Communication Policy
The communication policy has for decades been shaped by the emergence of new and modern technologies in the field of communication. The system has to be flexible and be altered on arrival of new technology else it will be outrun and lose power (Gittens, 2012). The invention of each new technology necessitates the formation of a new policy regime that is stipulated under the technology. The determining forces in the contours of communication in the United States are common carriers, print media, the internet, and broadcasting cable TV. One can trace back policies in communication since the diffusion of the telephone that was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Before the diffusion of telephone, other telephone related services had flooded the market to create a competition that was neither efficient nor interconnected. The government had to intervene in the year 1920 when they declared telephone and telegram as the common carrier in the country, and they were required to offer interconnection to its customers without malice or discrimination (Healey, 2011).
In 1927, there was a chaotic environment due to many broadcasters that led to overcrowding, and that led to the formation of the Radio Act of 1927. The Congress passed the Act to restore order in the over-the-air broadcasting (Helpman, 2011). A body known as Federal Radio Commission (FRC) was created to relocate the electromagnetic spectra and regulate the mushrooming broadcasting industry. As Krattenmaker noted, the industry was from the beginning regulated by the government due to lack of comparable industry-specific agencies at federal levels. According to the 1927 Radio Act, FRC used public interest criterion to reallocate electromagnetic spectra. That allowed the media houses to broadcast as long as they adhered and met the public’s demands, necessities, or convenience.
Many broadcasters, especially educational and non-profit stations, though that FRC would favor them as they served the public interests, to their amazement, FRC argued that commercial broadcasters could serve the public better (Jerome, 2014). Due to that, the commercial broadcasters gained popularity and a competitive advantage. That caused non-profit and educational broadcasters to lose their broadcasting rights to commercial broadcasters like NBC and CBS. Since then, public interest method has become the threshold to which broadcasting houses should meet to gain a license. The purpose of the 1927 Act was to prevent chaos in the broadcasting environment but had no long-term effects and was not dynamic to handle future problems and advancement in the field of telecommunication. That led to the formation of the Communication Act of 1934 (Jjuuko " Berger, 2007).
The Communication Act of 1934 was drafted to empower and cement a long-lasting solution for communication that was not handled in the 1927 Act. The separation between telephony and broadcasting was formulated in the 1934 Act by assigning various sections to telephony and broadcasting in the Act. The Act also led to the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that was possible through the merging of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and the FRC. The purpose of the 1934 Act was to protect the interests of operating stations and preserve the growing broadcasting fraternity. The 1934 Act still upheld the public interest approach as a crucial determinant of regulations in communication (Koppell " Auer, 2012). The 1934 Act was formed when only the radio and telephony services were the only communication channels, and with the advancement and invention of modern methods ways of communication like the computers and internet, there was a need to formulate another Act. That led to the formation of the 1996 Act.
The Communication Act of 1934
Formed amidst depression, the 1934 communication Act intended to consolidate federal regulations in a way that there was a single communication line independent agency. There were a couple of amendments to meet the demands arising in the communication field, but it efficiently provided the basic structure on how federal government should regulate all forms of electronic media including television, radio, telephony, and in small ways aspects of the internet. For many years, FCC gained no popularity to the public through its crucial role in the field of communication (McMahan, 1979). FCC enabled the act to survive for seven decades amidst periods of intense social and technological change.
The Provisions of the Communication Act of 1934
Several provisions in the 1934 communication Act are discussed below. First, the layout of the Act gave the president the overall power in which bodies in the commission were supposed to report to him as the Chairman. All the members of the commission were supposed to come from the United States. The commissioners were not obliged to be involved in any manner of business related to communication like owning a radio or television station as that would jeopardize their functionality.
Differences between Communication Act of 1934 and Communication Act of 1996
Natural Monopoly
According to the 1934 Act, it was concluded that all long-distance and local telephone service were monopolies. That made the Communication Act to vest the FCC with the mandate of making the communication service an interstate (Morse, 1995). The policy came under pressure in the 1960s as natural-monopoly justification could not hold MCI when it entered the market. The development of cross-subsidies created a complex system that made it hard for the local phone service to be administered by the FCC. For the first Act of 1934, the monopoly was comfortable as it was the first advancement in technology, few challenges were evident as compared to the second Act of 1996. In 1996, the era of the internet had kicked in, and that could not be regulated using monopoly. The Internet is a full technology that requires a broad rule of ethics rather than control of contents.
Natural monopoly in the 1934 Act was applicable as all communication channels were wired and thus it was easier to control them as compared to the wireless communication in the modern technology (Schement, 2002). Whereas the first Act dealt much with maintenance and oversight of telephone monopolies, the 1996 Act was spearheaded towards a universal service that served beyond national boundaries but all over the world. It was concerned with the rapidly growing technology that required advanced monitoring. 1996 Act undid all the monopoly rules that existed and encouraged competition in the local telephone markets. The local carriers, by the help of 1996 Act, found themselves with their new competitors subjected to nondiscriminatory rules that are under net neutrality that focuses on social considerations rather than competitive or economic concerns.
Scarcity in the Mass Media
The regulatory body, FCC, had the mandatory role of controlling the number of distributors in the mass media industry. That was seen as a defense in the 1934 Act against the libertarian model that sort to resist government efforts to control and shape the content, distributor architecture, and business models in the media industry. The FCC was able to dominate its control in the media until the 1990s when the cable TV dominated the industry. During this period (Selected provisions of the Communications Act of 1934, 1998), the FCC had no option than to enact the 1996 Act that would allow an open market for digital stations thus creating a variety of content for subscribers to choose. Unlike the communication Act of 1934, the one for 1996 created a free market where more than three stations were operational. They concentrated more not on wired networks but on lasting and expansive powers over broadband internet and nascent services that depend entirely on data networks.
The Common Carriage
The communication act of the 1930s, through the creation of FCC, brought broadcast telecommunications and radio under a mono regulator. At that time, subscribers were using wired and wireless technologies where telegram and telephone were wired while radio used frequency modulation or wireless technology. Telegram and telephone were under Title II while the radio was under Title III (Stevenson, 2016). The wire broadcast was considered as one-to-many while the wireless one was seen as infeasible when FCC was created. The existing omission would later create trouble in classifying cable TV and other internet services as provided by the communication Act of 1934.
In the provision of communication Act of 1996, the issue of common carriage is well stipulated. The modern carriage is a subject of the common-law relating to public “callings,” in that providers are seen as common carriers with a load of obligations to meet when offering their services to the public (Gittens, 2012). The issue of reasonable tariffs and nondiscriminatory mandates distinguishes the Act from its predecessors. One distinction that separates common carriers from private carriers is that common carriers can abandon control that traverses the network. The distinction could not last for long as in the modern technology; both private and common carriers are linked together in that telephone, satellite TV, internet service providers, and broadcast all have the same attribute (bound by both private and common carriers) (Usunier " Lee, 2003).
Cable TV
During the formation of the communication Act of 1934, the commission had not contemplated about the cable TV. The services were oriented towards a common carrier and private carrier classification. The olden cable systems known as CATV were wired in their initial stages that acted as partial carriers of TV broadcasting common to ‘dumb pipe’ telecommunication firms. With time, cable operators introduced curating content, inserting advertising, and originating shows. That led to the expansion of cable systems and the queuing system began were city officials applied the method of first-come-first-serve. In the 1970s. The FCC rules were struck down by the Supreme Court due to inefficiency and slow processing of information amidst growing technology but were later reinstated by the Congress (Wright " Buckley, 2010), and that led to the enactment of Communication act of 1996.
In 1996 Cable Act, the Congress levied a strict duty on common-carriage that required all local broadcast to be carried out upon request thus eliminating the first-come-first-serve-rule. Today, all TV providers and cable TV systems are quasi-common carriers, and that hinders them against exercising control over substantial amounts of programs in their networks. The new Communication Act requires them to carry all broadcast in their local market, permit access to educational, public, and government groups, and obligation to allow access to competing programs despite them being private carriers (Creech, 2007). As seen previously, cable providers have ventured into the telephone market using interconnected VoIP, and all internet providers are obliged to adhere to Title II regulations ignoring the uncertain classification of the services.
The Communication Act of 1934 and that of 1996 are important pillars in the telecommunication sector. Despite their differences that is brought about by different timelines, they both complement each other. As seen in the above discussion, the Communication Act of 1934 was formed to ease the full environment thus bringing sanity in the industry. Without the Act, the Communication Act of 1996 could lack the foundation to incorporate the new technology. Globalization and numerous inventions give no room for the Communication act to be dormant as it has to evolve as the industry grows. Without proper measure and keeping up to date with the current trends in technology, the Act will remain null and inferior to new technology thus creating the uncontrolled environment.
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