- MetTel's COO told us the Telecom Act “most certainly” lowered prices and accelerated innovation but competition proved difficult to sustain
- Cable broadband drove the most significant network disruption in the early 2000s
- Enterprises have shifted from voice to data, fueling demand for managed network services and integrated connectivity
February 8, 2026 marked 30 years since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of U.S. communications law since 1934. Designed to deregulate the industry and open markets to competition, the legislation aimed to break up entrenched monopolies and lower costs for consumers.
For MetTel, the anniversary is more than just symbolic. The company’s origins are directly tied to the law’s creation. “We are a byproduct of the Telecom Act,” said Andoni Economou, COO of MetTel. One of the company’s co-founders saw the legislation coming and “kind of said, let’s participate in this. It sounds like a very big event in a very big industry.”
At the time, the market structure was straightforward but highly concentrated. “It was all just local monopolies and two or three long distance providers,” he told Fierce Network during an interview. The Telecom Act sought to change that by allowing long-distance carriers to enter local markets — and vice versa — while creating new pathways for competitive entrants.
The Act's goals were clear. “It was to create competition, promote innovation and reduce rates for Americans. Yes, really, that simple,” Economou said.
Thirty years later, the results are mixed, but measurable. When it comes to pricing and innovation, Economou said, “It most certainly did. If you wanted to lower rates, it certainly accomplished that, and it certainly promoted technology change,” he said. The early internet era, combined with deregulation, accelerated deployment of new access technologies and helped drive a surge in data consumption.
But competition, which was the main point of the law, was more difficult to sustain. The years immediately following the Act saw a rapid influx of new entrants. “Literally, like thousands of CLECs were created from ’96 to 2000,” he said, backed by “hundreds of billions of dollars… invested in small startups.”
Consolidation and disruption
What followed was consolidation, driven in part by litigation and financial pressures. “What took place really was a lot of litigation between the major providers,” Economou said, adding that over time, “the local providers… became bigger than the long distance providers,” while many competitors were acquired or disappeared.
At the same time, the most durable disruption came from outside the traditional telco model. Cable operators, not CLECs, reshaped the broadband landscape. “Cable providers really kind of transformed our world when they introduced broadband at the consumer level,” he said.
Those early broadband offerings — often bundled with voice and video — forced incumbent operators to pivot. “We’re all fighting over copper lines,” while cable providers deployed higher-capacity networks that accelerated internet adoption, he said.
Over time, the shift toward data became dominant. Today, voice services, once the foundation of the telecom business, are now secondary, if that. “The voice service is just something that kind of… rides along whatever data network you build,” he said.
The transformation is particularly visible in the enterprise market. “Businesses are run completely differently now… it’s all about the movement of data,” Economou said, pointing to distributed workforces, hybrid operations and the need to manage connectivity across locations and devices.
MetTel's own evolution
That shift helped drive MetTel’s own evolution. Founded as a CLEC providing residential services in New York, the company moved into enterprise networking as customer demands changed. “We realized the right market was the business market,” Economou said, especially for organizations seeking “a nationwide offering where they didn’t have to deal with multiple providers.”
The company’s expansion into managed network services reflects a broader trend across the sector. Enterprises increasingly want connectivity delivered as an integrated service rather than a set of components. “Enterprises didn’t really want to be bothered with telecommunication IT services… you want someone else that can come in and make that easy," Economou noted.
More change is ahead
Looking forward, he sees another period of structural change coming down the pike — driven by both access innovation and software-driven automation.
“Satellite is an access method and it will transform networks,” he said, particularly as low Earth orbit systems expand coverage in hard-to-reach areas. At the same time, artificial intelligence is expected to reshape operations and business models. “AI will transform everything else,” he added, suggesting companies will need to adapt quickly or risk being displaced.
Thirty years after the Telecom Act, the industry it helped reshape looks very different from what lawmakers envisioned in 1996. While the law succeeded in lowering prices and enabling new entrants, technology cycles — from broadband to cloud to AI — have played a larger role in determining how the market evolved.
For Economou, the takeaway is less about whether the Act fully achieved its competitive goals, and more about what it enabled: an environment where change, once unlocked, could accelerate far beyond the scope of the original policy, he noted.