> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://broadbandbreakfast.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Broadband Breakfast Course Traces 150 Years of American Telecommunications - URL: https://broadbandbreakfast.com/broadband-breakfast-course-traces-150-years-of-american-telecommunications/ - Published: 2026-08-20T19:20:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T19:20:03.000Z - Description: Broadband Breakfast CEO previews the 35-lesson course tracing American telecom from Bell's patent to AI. The course launches Monday - Author: Broadband Breakfast - Tags: Telecom 150, BBLO, Alexander Graham Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Federal Radio Act, Rural Electrification Act, Marty Cooper, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Theodore Vail, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell, #no-flux, #no-ads, Broadband's Impact WASHINGTON, Aug. 20, 2026 - Broadband Breakfast will begin releasing "[150 Years of American Telecommunications](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/course/)," an online course spanning six sections and 35 lessons, on Monday, with new lessons rolling out weekly. **Drew Clark**, CEO of Broadband Breakfast, previewed the course Wednesday during a [solo Broadband Breakfast Live Online session](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/broadband-breakfast-on-august-19-2026-150-years-of-american-telecommunications-the-online-course/). "History is the way we learn things," Clark said. "There's an incredible richness and a depth from going through and looking at the historical events that frame the world we live in today." The timing is deliberate. "We are this year celebrating 250 years of American independence and, of course, 150 years of American telecommunications, because those anniversaries coincide, which is kind of amazing," Clark said. **Alexander Graham Bell** patented the telephone in March 1876. ### *Section A: An American Invention and an American Telecom Network* The opening section covers the telephone and the telegraph. Lesson 1 examines Bell's invention and the rival claims that produced what Clark called American patent lore: The race to the patent office. Lesson 2 turns to how the two networks diverged in practice. "The inventors thought the telephone would follow the telegraph and be a business-to-business type of thing," Clark said. "But it wasn't. It was an invention that consumers gravitated towards." Lesson 3 contrasts the American approach with the postal, telegraph and telephone administrations that ran service elsewhere. "What was different was it was a government monopoly in other countries," Clark said. A final lesson in this first free section, Section A, covers the origins of wireless and **Guglielmo Marconi**. ### *Section B: The New Deal for American Communications* Section B is about broadcasting, and it is dominated by an unexpected figure. **Herbert Hoover** served as secretary of commerce under **Warren Harding** and **Calvin Coolidge** before winning the presidency. "He was such an active guy that people called him the secretary of commerce and undersecretary of everything else," Clark said. The lesson traces the licensing controversies and court decisions that preceded the Radio Act of 1927, a history that bears directly on current litigation over agency independence. "Look at the congressional language and intent of the Federal Radio Act, and you see very clearly that it was designed to be a multiparty entity, and that was specifically to not give all the power to one man, namely Herbert Hoover," Clark said. Later lessons cover the fairness doctrine and public media, the Rural Electrification Act, and the distinct culture of American broadcast television. On the First Amendment questions raised at the radio conferences of the 1920s, Clark was blunt: "Broadcast then and still has lesser First Amendment protections than non-broadcast." ### *Section C: Early Cable, Wireless and Satellite* The third section covers the pre-internet era, and Clark suggested it holds the thread running through the whole course. "Maybe if there is a theme of all of this, it's where and how are these modes of communications going to be governed and regulated," he said. Cable began as community antenna television in mountain hollows and remote areas that could not receive broadcast signals. The lesson works through what Clark described as "documenting how on earth the Federal Communications Commission even got its fingers on this technology," given that cable appeared nowhere in Titles I, II or III of the Communications Act. Other lessons cover the satellite race triggered by Sputnik in 1957, the origins of 911, the FCC's computer inquiries into information services, and the AT&T divestiture that ran from the Justice Department's 1974 case to the Jan. 1, 1984, breakup into seven regional companies. The section closes on early cellular and **Marty Cooper**, and on a lost opportunity, namely, “how we could have had the cell phone, I'd say at least two decades before we did, but how FCC controversies, regulations and lobbying led to a curtailment of that," Clark said. ### *Section D: The Internet* Section D runs from the first transmissions in 1969 through the Communications Decency Act and *Reno v. ACLU*. The lesson on TCP/IP, the protocol developed by **Vint Cerf** and **Bob Kahn**, focuses on interoperability. Separate Defense Department projects mirrored wireline, wireless and satellite networks, and none could talk to each other. "One aspect of TCP/IP was facilitating the communications from a satellite network to a wired network, or from a wireless network to one of the others," Clark said. The World Wide Web, invented by **Tim Berners-Lee** at CERN in Switzerland, gets its own lesson, including its early competition with the University of Minnesota's Gopher protocol. Other lessons cover the 1992 Cable Act, the 1994 privatization of the National Science Foundation network, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Netscape initial public offering of August 1995, which Clark called "the beginnings of that kind of power that Silicon Valley has over everything in our telecom and communications networks." He reserved particular weight for the administration of President **Bill Clinton** and Vice President **Al Gore**, which "merits this over anyone else before or since" for putting in place "both the things they did and the things they didn't do that created the world we're living in." ### *Section E: Internet Aftershocks* The five lessons in Section E depart from the format of the rest of the course. "These five are a little bit more cross-cutting," Clark said, covering copyright, privacy, cybersecurity, antitrust and the social history of the internet across the three decades since 1996. Copyright is treated as a live controversy. "We're seeing a new upswing in the controversy over copyright as it relates to AI," Clark said, pointing to both training data and continuing access for inference. Privacy is largely a story of laws never passed, with rules from Europe and California filling the gap. The antitrust lesson runs from the Microsoft case of the late 1990s to the recent cases against Google, Meta, Apple and Amazon. On cybersecurity, Clark offered a forecast. "Thirty years ago, cybersecurity was much more a matter of statecraft, and it still is, but it's increasingly a matter of everyday connections," he said. "I think it's only going to get worse." ### *Section F: Broadband and AI* The closing section carries nine lessons and moves from universal service to artificial intelligence. The term universal service was coined by **Theodore Vail** at AT&T and became shorthand for cross-subsidizing rural rates with urban ones, a model the breakup dismantled. The lesson follows the Universal Service Fund into today's funding fights. Others cover the transition from dial-up to fiber, wireless internet service providers, and municipal networks and electric cooperatives. Clark linked the last of those back to Section B, noting that most municipal networks grew out of cities that ran their own electricity. Clark noted President **Franklin D. Roosevelt**'s framing of the threat public power posed to private providers as the “woodshed” that investor-owned utilities would face when they failed to serve rural citizens. Clark also discussed Wireless Internet Service Provider “cowboys.” "I have a lot of admiration for the way WISPs just go out there and build in these rural areas," Clark said. "I've lived in rural areas where the only service available was through WISPs." The final lessons address Moore's law and the rise of CPUs and GPUs, social networks and **Mark Zuckerberg**, low-Earth orbit satellites, internet exchange points and data centers, and the role communications networks play in AI. Of **Elon Musk** and SpaceX President **Gwynne Shotwell**, Clark said, "It is shocking, stunning, impressive what that team has done in flooding the low-Earth orbit with satellites." On data centers: "Energy is now the big fight." Asked by an online questioner whether quantum computing would be included, Clark demurred. "It's not part of the history yet," he said. "It hasn't earned its place." ### *How to enroll* Section A is available, for free, for all who sign up. Sections B through F – 31 lessons, in total – are available for $150\. This includes three months of access to Broadband Breakfast News, and access to the livestream for the Oct. 1 conference in Washington, ["250 Years of American Independence and 150 Years of American Telecommunications."](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/telecom150) [![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/29/97/29976d9d-89ea-4c77-8c0b-0e8a0eafed35/content/images/2026/08/250150_course_graphic_YT_wordmark_title-1.png)](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/course-interest) [***Sign Up for FREE for First Two Modules**](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/course-interest) [Sign Up for FREE for Section A ](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/course-interest) Current Breakfast Club Members receive the course (and the livestream) at no additional cost. Participants who complete it will receive a certificate.