250 Years of American Independence & 150 Years of American Telecommunications

An in-person event at the National Press Club
Thursday, October 1, 2026

Register for Only $150!

Mark your calendar for the National Press Club on Thursday, October 1, from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. ET!

America turned 250 this year. American telecommunications turned 150, dating to the first telephone call on March 7, 1876. The two anniversaries tell a story of a nation and its networks growing up together, each reshaping the other across the past 15 decades.

On October 1, Broadband Breakfast will gather historians, policymakers, and industry leaders at the National Press Club to trace that history from the telephone to the internet to artificial intelligence, and to ask what 150 years of precedent can teach us about the debates shaping policy now.

Program on October 1, 2026

After an introductory keynote, three historians will walk the audience through the eras in turn, each recapping a fifty-year chapter and the policy fights it left behind.

Panel 1: Competition

From the breakup of Bell's monopoly to the competition mandate of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, competition has been the defining battle of American telecom. Each generation has faced a version of the same question: who gets to build the network, and on what terms. 

This panel brings that history to bear on today's fights over broadband deployment, spectrum access, and the vast infrastructure now being built to power artificial intelligence. It asks whether the current buildout is opening the market to new entrants or consolidating it in fewer hands, and what a century and a half of competition policy suggests about the answer.

Panel 2: Innovation 

Every wave of innovation, the telephone, broadcast, the internet, and now artificial intelligence, has outrun the rules written before it. Time and again, policymakers have had to decide how much to intervene and how much to leave alone, and those choices have accelerated some breakthroughs while stalling others. 

This panel examines how past regulatory bargains shaped the technologies that followed, and weighs how to protect the permissionless innovation that built the modern internet while managing the risks each new tool introduces. It asks what 150 years of precedent suggests about governing what comes next.

Partner with us

Sponsorship opportunities are available for organizations that want to be part of that story and reach Broadband Breakfast's audience of broadband professionals, policymakers, and industry leaders.

Want to learn more about partnering with Broadband Breakfast on "250 Years of American Independence & 150 Years of American Telecommunications?" Fill out the form to receive the Media Kit, or email Sales & Marketing Director Quinn Nghiem at quinn@breakfast.media or Development Associate Akul Saxena at akul@breakfast.media

From the 3-Part Preview Series

Session 1

1876–1926, The Telephone and the Transatlantic Cable. The first session covered the half-century from Alexander Graham Bell's patent and the founding of Bell Telephone through the rise of AT&T, the buildout of nationwide copper networks, and the completion of the first transcontinental telephone line in 1914. 

Telephone’s Rise Was Shaped by Courts and Lobbying, Not Just Wires, Historians Say

The patent Bell filed in 1876 never described a speaking telephone. His lawyers later argued it did.

Broadband BreakfastBroadband Breakfast

Session 2

1927–1976, Broadcasting, Cable and the Creation of the Media. The second session opened with the creation of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927. It then traces the passage of the Communications Act of 1934, the postwar television boom, the landmark 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates, the emergence of PBS, and cable systems that began challenging the big three broadcast networks. 

From the Beginning, Politics Triggered Broadcasting

Media scholars argued that politics, not technology, shaped American broadcasting from 1927 on, repeatedly shielding incumbents from competition.

Broadband BreakfastBroadband Breakfast

Session 3

1977–2026, Computing, the Internet and Artificial Intelligence. The third session opened with the breakup of Ma Bell and traces the transition from ARPANET to the commercial internet, the World Wide Web, the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the dot-com era, the rise of broadband and big tech, net neutrality battles, the smartphone revolution, and the explosion of large language models in the ChatGPT era. 

The Internet Dispersed Power. The Supreme Court is Concentrating It

Panelists at BroadbandLive event including the ‘father of the Internet,’ the author of the maxim that ‘Code is Law’ and a pivotal FCC chairman

Broadband BreakfastBroadband Breakfast