How America Got On-line

6

_______________

Internationalization and Competition

 

After the Fall

On February 9, 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the most important United States telecommunications statute enacted since the Communications Act of 1934. Congress had worked for more than five years to enact a statute that would accommodate the various interests involved in telecommunications and would take into account the new realities of 1996. Much had changed since the AT&T breakup in 1984; indeed, many of the important companies in modern telecommunications had either not been born or were not involved in 1984. Netscape and America Online, for example, were unknown in 1984, while Microsoft at that time was concerned only with software development, not telecommunications. ...