telegraph

New FCC rules kick telegraph service into the 21st century

30 September 2017 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission isn’t giving up on the telegraph. In fact, it’s giving telegraph companies a turbo-charged boost of free market competition. But don’t worry, it isn’t going completely crazy. The FCC is making it very clear that telegraph service is still subject to common carrier rules. In a lighter touch sort of way, of course, since this new and improved FCC is gung ho about light touch common carrier regulation.

In a wonderfully circular bit of reasoning, the FCC has decided that since there aren’t any telegraph companies, it’s okay for them to discontinue service without giving notice, because that will promote telegraph competition…

No entities filing [service reports] in the past five years indicated that they provide telegraph service, and we are not aware of any interstate telegraph service providers today.

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Last call for telegraph companies, says FCC

15 February 2015 by Steve Blum
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Does this mean the end of the candygram too?

Just in time to bring broadband service under its regulatory umbrella, the FCC is doing some clean up work on its common carrier rules. It’s proposing to completely delete regulations it either hasn’t officially enforced in many years or are simply outdated, and to begin erasing telegraph from its vocabulary.

The first step, it seems, is to find out if telegraph service exists anymore…

We seek comment on whether there are any providers offering telegraph service today at all, and if so, whether such service offerings warrant retaining the term “telegraph” in the rules…Would there be any practical impact if the Commission were to delete “telegraph” from these rules?

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