> The Republicans won on this one--the 1996 telecom act broadly deregulated the telecom industry. Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom mar

> The Republicans won on this one--the 1996 telecom act broadly deregulated the telecom industry. Most of Europe followed suit and deregulated their telecom markets similar to how we did it in the 1996 act. Seems Europeans consumers have reaped massive benefits since then: At least where I live we now have fast Internet access, calls and sms cost nothing (theoretically speaking we get n free minutes and sms, but I never used more in the last few years) and data is cheap. Not saying this is all because of the deregulation but I think it helped.