Republican leaders in Congress are dropping broad hints that it's time (once again) to try to overhaul the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which has been increasingly burdened by legal challenges to FCC decisions (most recently and notably, net neutrality) as well as by dramatic  issues such as privacy and cybersecurity.

Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) said, "It’s time for Congress to be heard from again,” according to a report this week in the congressional newspaper, The Hill.

“There are way more moving parts now than there were back then,” Thune told the newspaper.

President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Telecom Act into law on Feb. 8 of that year (see photo).

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and  Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), both of whom are considering a bid to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year, agree that a telecom rewrite is overdue. Walden now chairs the E&C Communications and Technology subcommittee; Shimkus chairs its Environment and the Economy subcommittee and is a member of the Communications and Technology group.  

“You want to do a blank slate," Shimkus told The Hill.  He envisions starting the process by assuming "there’s no FCC, but we have the communication devices" and legislators have to create a regulatory ecosystem. Shimkus contended that the '96 law is not suited to today’s technology, calling that tech/law gap an incentive to update the Act.

“I’ve got to believe that’s compelling,” he said. “It shouldn’t be threatening. In fact, you should encourage the FCC to be involved.”

All speculation about Telecom Act reform in the 115th Congress is, of course, uncertain in today's volatile political environment. Control of the Senate may change, and the balance of power in the House may narrow.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House communications subcommittee, told The Hill that the process may depend on who chairs the full Commerce committee and "what kind of leadership and ...  vision [about] what needs to be done across the communications and technology sectors."

Telecom reform legislation has been bruited around Capitol Hill for nearly a decade, with prior Commerce Committee chairs acknowledging the need for updates in the volatile tech/telecom environment. Efforts to seek agreement between the legacy communications providers, including cable as well as telephone companies, and Silicon Valley upstarts have foiled many of the plans. Turf wars are also likely, as the FCC and Federal Trade Commission jurisdictions overlap on issues such as privacy and security. Not to mention the role of military/security concerns in the evolving spectrum wars.

An ambitious effort for a rewrite by House Republican three years ago floundered, and the next attempt will have to delve into the unchartered worlds of the Internet of Things and other applications that were barely in the lexicon early in the Obama administration.

As Thune acknowledged in The Hill report, the term "Internet" barely appears in the 1996 Act, even though the World Wide Web was well underway at that time.

"It’s a whole different world" now, Thune said. "We think that the policies, the regulations, that apply to the industry today need to be updated, need to be modernized.”

Yet finding consensus may be much more challenging than in prior years. Many analysts have pointed to the wider-than-ever range of organizations now touched by FCC rules, making it harder to find agreement. There has been considerable talk about separate updates of the telecom and media portions of the law, but that approach is increasingly difficult as the convergence of the two worlds (Comcast-NBCU and AT&T-DirecTV exemplify the situation) expands and rules affect all sectors of the telecom arena.

Not to mention the roles of non-traditional media providers such as Google and Amazon.

While the next leadership of pertinent Congressional units is unknown, the issue of telecom reform -- complex as it is -- is being positioned as a priority objective for the 115th Congress. It's just not clear how "high" a priority it will become.

My involvement in formulating the Telecom Act of 1996 began in 1988, when I joined with then-Sen. Al Gore in introducing legislation to allow telephone companies to offer cable TV service (multichannel video distribution services) in their telephone service areas. That measure became the first plank in the ’96 Act, and it was joined by a provision to enable cable companies and other competitors into the local telephone market, a provision to create greater competition in the long-distance market by setting the conditions for the entry of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) into the nationwide long-distance market and a provision enabling the RBOCs to manufacture telecommunications equipment. I was active throughout the committee process in processing the ’96 Act and served as a member of the conference committee.

My “birthday wish” for the act is that Congress adopt much-needed legislation recognizing the digital and mobile era into which telecommunications has emerged. The ’96 Act was about analog services and, to a large extent, “plain old telephone services.” The following provisions will help to modernize the ’96 Act for the digital era:

1. Congress should pass legislation that declares broadband is an information service not subject to common-carrier regulation. The legislation should also give statutory permanence to strong network-neutrality guarantees along the lines of the FCC’s 2010 open Internet order. Such a bill allows both network-neutrality proponents and the proponents of light-touch regulation of broadband to achieve their major legislative objectives, and puts to rest the longest standing and most contentious telecommunications debate of the 21st century. It would also remove the uncertainty about future broadband regulation, which is restraining broadband investment.

2. Congress should recognize in legislation the advanced nature of the Internet- protocol transition and set a date, perhaps 2020, for the sunset of the old legacy copper network. Every dollar that telephone companies are required by law to expend today maintaining the copper network is a dollar not expended on fiber optics and other advanced 21st century telecommunications infrastructures.

3. Another legislative provision should create incentives for government agencies to surrender telecommunications spectrum for auction to commercial wireless carriers. Simply stated, government agencies should be offered a share of the auction proceeds in exchange for a surrender of the spectrum they hold. That approach appears to be working in the case of television broadcasters, and there’s every reason to believe it would work well for government agencies. In my mind, that’s the best approach to getting large allocations of spectrum onto the commercial auction block quickly to meet the growing demand for spectrum for mobile data.

4. Congress should also adopt a Bill of Rights for privacy for Internet users with jurisdiction in the Federal Trade Commission over all telecommunications privacy issues. Giving Internet users greater assurance that their privacy is protected should result in a greater willingness to use the Internet for commercial purposes.

Rick Boucher is honorary co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance and was a U.S. House of Representatives member for Virginia from 1983 to 2011, serving as chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.

With the Telecommunications Act of 1996 marking its 20th Anniversary today -- Feb. 8 -- the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy will hold a media breakfast tomorrow (Feb. 9) to commemorate that anniversary.

The Act was the first major overhaul of communications regulations since the 1934 Act.

The breakfast will host a panel featuring some voices of experience--officials who were involved in drafting the legislation.

They will also posit what a Telecom Act of 2017 might look like. House Republicans collected string, and comment, on a revamp, but in an election year that is unlikely to get much traction.

Weighing in at the event: Ralph Everett, Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy; Rick Boucher, honorary co-chair, Internet Innovation Alliance, and former chair of the House Communications Subcommittee; Harold Furchtgott-Roth former FCC commissioner and current director of the Center for Economics of the Internet, Hudson Institute; Larry Irving, co-chair of the Internet Innovation Alliance and former head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration; and John Mayo, economics professor, Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, and executive director, Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy.