Why Stovepipe Regulation No Longer Works: An Essay on the Need for a New Market-Oriented Communications Policy

In the ten years since the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the telecommunications industry has undergone profound technological and marketplace changes. May argues that the "techno-functional constructs" of the statute regulate services based on increasingly obsolete definitions. This Article argues that those changes have undermined the "stovepipe" regulatory scheme of the 1996 Act. In an increasingly diverse and competitive marketplace, the "stovepipe" model of regulation should be left in the dustbin of history.

Instead, May argues that a new market-oriented regulatory regime focusing on consumer welfare through the application of antitrust principles should form the basis of a new regulatory model.