Can I see the laws that affect phone companies and free speech? That's an interesting observation, and does parallel Twitter/YouTube/etc, so I'd like to see the wording for it.
I think that the relevant laws are those related to the phone/cable companies being public utilities (and thus explicit, by-design, state-permitted monopolies or duopolies). They aren’t allowed to wiretap them (because communications privacy was a bigger deal to legislators pre-internet) and have to provide service to all comers (ostensibly in exchange for being a monopoly-by-design).
From my limited understanding, this regulation forcing them to offer service (as a utility) to 100% of the market is coordinated on a state-by-state basis by the public service/public utilities commission.
(Fun fact, I learned this at a young age because my dad ran a paging/voicemail service out of the basement of our single family, suburban residential home when I was about 10. We were the only house on the block with dozens of trunk lines coming into our little bungalow; but by law they had to do it if you ordered it. Try that today with internet access from a cable company, ha! It’s all but impossible due to TOS to run an internet business at a residential address now. Hosting for-profit services with the internet you pay for or reselling the service in any way means you get instantly unplugged.)
Sorry I don’t have a direct link to the all-comers bit of PUC/PSC regulation, but this should give you a starting point for research.
The not-allowed-to-tap-phones bit is a federal law:
It’s sort of insane how provider-wiretapped has been the all-encompassing default for almost all of the largest DM/1-to-1 communications systems in the world: SMS, WeChat, Facebook, VK, Instagram, Gmail. WhatsApp and iMessage are outliers in this regard. Almost all popular new entrants like Slack and Discord are provider-tapped, too.
This is a relatively recent development in our society’s relationship with electronic communications. Reading content by the provider used to be illegal as fuck.
From my limited understanding, this regulation forcing them to offer service (as a utility) to 100% of the market is coordinated on a state-by-state basis by the public service/public utilities commission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utilities_commission
(Fun fact, I learned this at a young age because my dad ran a paging/voicemail service out of the basement of our single family, suburban residential home when I was about 10. We were the only house on the block with dozens of trunk lines coming into our little bungalow; but by law they had to do it if you ordered it. Try that today with internet access from a cable company, ha! It’s all but impossible due to TOS to run an internet business at a residential address now. Hosting for-profit services with the internet you pay for or reselling the service in any way means you get instantly unplugged.)
Sorry I don’t have a direct link to the all-comers bit of PUC/PSC regulation, but this should give you a starting point for research.
The not-allowed-to-tap-phones bit is a federal law:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511
It’s sort of insane how provider-wiretapped has been the all-encompassing default for almost all of the largest DM/1-to-1 communications systems in the world: SMS, WeChat, Facebook, VK, Instagram, Gmail. WhatsApp and iMessage are outliers in this regard. Almost all popular new entrants like Slack and Discord are provider-tapped, too.
This is a relatively recent development in our society’s relationship with electronic communications. Reading content by the provider used to be illegal as fuck.