What 150 Years of the Telephone Teaches Us About Regulating Digital Communications

March 10 is the 150th anniversary of the first telephone call, made by Alexander Graham Bell in Boston. The telephone seems like an ancient technology today. It’s easy to go online to find funny videos of young people trying to figure out how to use a rotary phone (hint: the thing in the middle turns). But while the technology of communications has changed, core economic principles have not. The lessons of telecom regulation provide lessons for the enforcement and creation of new digital-platform competition policies around the world. Not all the lessons stemmed from successes, but they all should be remembered.