But many of the legacy telecom laws remain on the books. It's tech that was exempted from these regulations, not legacy telecom. Sadly the privacy protections we had on phone calls were never applied to data. That would have resulted in a very different world than that in which we live today.
That was a scam. Follow the money. Lots of it was invested in 1990s/early 2000s, and every penny ended up in the pockets of ATT, VZN, and their executives and investment bankers. Only now, as sibling observes, common carriage and other requirements are gone.