Deregulation
In the 1970s and 1980s deregulation weakened the monopolies that had dominated the trucking, banking, airlines, natural gas, telecommunication, and eventually the electric utilities industry. By 1978 most major segments were faced with mandatory changes. In 1992 the National Energy Policy Act (NEPA) was passed requiring utility companies to make their transmission systems available to third-party users at the same level of cost. A clatter of legal quarrels ensued thereafter and FPL was accused of charging excessive rates and denying fair access to its system.