How regulation shaped the telecommunications boom in the 1990s

The telecommunications boom was a stock market bubble that grew in the late 1990s as Internet use spread and investment flowed into new dot-com companies, with the World Wide Web created in 1991. The lessons answer how technology and regulation fueled the boom, helping readers understand their role in its rapid growth. They connect changing rules and capabilities with the difficulty of anticipating demand.

2 articles, 1 book · about 1 hr 2 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   the impact of the telecommunications boom in the 1990s · Wikipedia · 23 min read

   The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was expected to result in many new technologies from which many people wanted to profit. The telecommunications boom in the 1990s saw telecommunications equipment companies invest more than $500 billion, mostly financed with debt, into laying fiber optic cable, adding new switches, and building wireless networks in the five years after the American Telecommunications Act of 1996 went into effect. The growth in capacity vastly outstripped the growth in demand.

2. Read
   Boom and Bust in Telecommunications · richmondfed.org · 39 min read

   The telecommunications boom and bust, this article contends, was caused by major changes in the regulatory landscape and rapid technological progress, which made it difficult for telecommunications firms and outside investors to accurately forecast supply and demand.

3. Book
   

   The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires · Bookshop.org

   The Master Switch by Tim Wu describes how radio, telephone, television, and film began free and open, then faced battles for domination and capture by monopolies or cartels.

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