Congress

Time for New Telecom Act, Panelists Say

A new framework should account for technological evolution, experts said at a Benton event

Jake Neenan

Jake Neenan

— 3 min read
Time for New Telecom Act, Panelists Say
From left: Johannes Bauer, director of the Quello Center at Michigan State University; Lai Yi Ohlsen, head of Cloudflare Radar; KC Claffy, director of UC San Diego’s Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis; Tejas Narechania, professor at UC Berkeley School of Law; and Scott Jordan, computer science professor at UC Irvine

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25, 2026 – The 1996 Telecom Act is in need of an update, experts said Wednesday at a Benton Institute for Broadband & Society event.

The law’s more comprehensive regulatory regimes don’t cover broadband, which is now much more widely used than the services the Telecom Act was aimed at, said Scott Jordan, a computer science professor at UC Irvine and former technology chief at the Federal Communications Commission.

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