Federal Communications Commission

Abstract

In 1934, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act establishing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to govern all electrically transmitted messages, which at the time included those by telephone, telegraph, and radio. The FCC was initially created because the limited availability of broadcast spectra required regulation by some central authority. Federal regulation of railroads and telegraph set a precedent for regulating the means of communication, which posed thorny issues of freedom of speech and the press as provided in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The roots of telecommunications law go back at least as far as the late nineteenth century when the US Supreme Court indicated that telegraph companies had the same characteristics as common carriers and thus could be regulated similarly. Various forms of regulation were ruled to be within the authority of the agency and not to violate the basic civil rights protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.