Abstract
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 did not grant modern digital platforms a legal franchise or exempt them from federal antitrust law. It did, however, help establish a lasting asymmetry in American communications law. Congress imposed affirmative access duties on incumbent local exchange carriers, including interconnection, unbundled network elements, resale, collocation, and regulated wholesale rates. Digital intermediaries later developed under a different mix of antitrust law, liability protections, private contract, and First Amendment constraints. That divergence matters when a platform controls a durable route to market and competes with the businesses that depend on it.
This Article asks whether existing antitrust and communications-law tools can provide timely and administrable remedies for digital bottlenecks. Antitrust litigation remains indispensable, but its case-specific inquiry into market power, exclusionary conduct, causation, and remedy does not itself create an ongoing access regime. The 1996 Act offers an institutional example: Congress paired defined access duties with pricing principles, technical rules, arbitration, and regulatory oversight.
The Article proposes a bounded legislative response. Congress should authorize function-specific access duties only after reviewable findings of durable market power, control over a material route to market, substantial switching or interoperability barriers, and likely competitive foreclosure. The regime would address technical interoperability, commercial terms, and data portability while protecting editorial judgment, security, privacy, and investment incentives. Its thresholds and remedies should be tested against evidence rather than presumed effective.
Why this matters
Digital platforms can control routes that other businesses need to reach customers. This paper asks when a carefully defined access rule might address that dependence, what evidence Congress should require before imposing one, and how such a rule could protect privacy, security, and editorial judgment.
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How to cite this preprint
George Skouras, From Telephone Unbundling to Digital Bottlenecks: The Telecommunications Act of 1996, Antitrust Enforcement, and a Function-Specific Access Regime (preprint, September 2026), george-skouras.com/articles/telephone-unbundling-digital-bottlenecks/. Please check for a later journal version before citing.
Research profiles
The paper is also available on ResearchGate and Academia.edu. It has been submitted to SSRN, where the record is subject to review.
This is a preprint submitted for journal consideration. It has not been peer reviewed.