The Communications Act of 1934, as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, is the statutory basis for US telecommunications regulation and the Federal Communications Commission's authority. It governs spectrum licensing, carrier obligations, interconnection, universal service and customer proprietary network information (CPNI) — and requires no carrier to expose a network API to anybody.
US Communications Act
US telecom regulation is extensive and old, and none of it points at the thing this research measures.
- Spectrum and licensing - The core of the regime: who may transmit, where, and on what terms.
- Interconnection - Carrier-to-carrier obligations that shaped the wholesale market, and which have no developer-facing analogue.
- CPNI - Customer proprietary network information rules restrict how carriers use and disclose subscriber data, which bears directly on the network APIs that expose exactly that data.
- No network-API mandate - Nothing obliges an operator to publish SIM swap, number verification, device location or quality-on-demand as a callable contract.
CPNI is the part API practitioners should read closely. The CAMARA identity verbs — number verification, SIM swap, device location — are built on precisely the subscriber information CPNI governs, which is why consent design is the make-or-break element of network APIs rather than an afterthought. The State of Telecom APIs also recorded the pattern this catalog keeps finding: the FCC’s own public APIs are more usable than most of the carriers it regulates.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This regulation shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this regulation in the context of a real sector.
The State of Telecom APIs
The FCC publishes real public REST APIs over its own data and out-publishes Deutsche Telekom, Comcast, BT, Vodafone, T-Mobile and AT&T — the regulator beating the regulated, again.
