There was a time in this country where all utilities such as: gas, power, electric, and telephone service were all operated under the regulation of one single company. In the early seventies AT&T was investigated for being a monopoly of telephone service for the entire country and the result of that endeavor changed the economic model for consumers. Now utility deregulation is law and the process allows private firms to supply utility services rather than restricting it to government-run agencies.
Telecom deregulation was the best thing that could have happened for the consumer because it created competition and benefits that lowered service prices. When AT&T operated as a monopoly they could charge whatever they wanted for their service and generally operate as they saw fit. It was common practice for AT&T to rent out telephones to place in homes without the option of owning. Soon after, the government stepped in and created The Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The 1996 Act was designed to open up telecom markets to competition and it relied on rapidly spreading advancements in the industry by requiring companies that used similar types of underlying network technologies to provide a single type of service. The biggest example of this was that AT&T operated seven regional providers of local telephone service and they supplied long-distance service to them all, but under the 1996 Act they could no longer offer that same long distance. They first had to prove that they had opened up the market for long-distance to competition before they could throw their hat in that ring. As a result long distance telephone rates decreased, the number of long distance minutes used increased, while improved entry and competition into the long distance telecommunications sector became a reality.
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