BROADBAND BATTLE
dailynews.yahoo.com
Tuesday February 26 08:20 PM EST
Broadband legislation to be decided this week
Federal legislation intended to speed up broadband deployment is scheduled to be decided in the House this week, as early as Wednesday.
A busy agenda and numerous amendments could delay a vote on HR 1542 to Friday at the latest, according to sources close to the bill.
HR 1542 is otherwise known as the Tauzin-Dingell broadband deregulation bill -- named for its sponsors, Reps. Billy Tauzin, R-Louisiana, and John Dingell, D-Michigan -- or the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act of 2001.
It would allow local phone behemoths, often referred to as Baby Bells, access to the long-distance data services market.
If passed, the measure would allow Baby Bells to offer broadband Internet services over long-distance lines, without requiring them to open their local phone service to outside competition as now required under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Julia Wilson, executive director of the San Diego Telecom Council, said Friday that the trade group still hasn't taken a stand on HR 1542 because it represents companies that could potentially fall on either side of the debate. The council intends to take up the issue at an undetermined future workshop, she said.
San Diego is reputed to have the second largest concentration of communication firms in the nation, behind Silicon Valley. According to the San Diego Telecom Council, the San Diego region has more than 500 companies in the communications business, employing some 40,000 people tasked with providing consumers the latest in voice and data applications, from video conferencing to interactive TV.
Broadband is defined as a type of data transmission in which a single medium can carry several channels at once. By contrast, baseband transmission allows only one signal at a time.
The technology has been pegged as the answer to faster downloads, fewer dropped calls, and more data transmission on wireless devices.
The Baby Bells -- which include Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), Bell South (NYSE: BLS) and SBC Communications (NYSE: SBC), parent company of San Diego's Pacific Bell -- say the proposed law would bolster broadband rollout by allowing them to get a return on their investments in digital subscriber line, or DSL, networks and infrastructure.
Loretta Walker, vice president of external affairs for SBC Pacific Bell, said Tuesday HR 1542 would create "some type of level playing field" for companies that offer Internet service.
"When the Telecom Act of '96 was conceived, the Internet was not an issue," she said. "The local phone companies were perceived as having a monopoly."
As it is, Walker says, SBC's DSL Internet services are burdened with regulations that cable modem (news - web sites) competitors, like San Diego's Cox Communications Inc. (NYSE: COX), don't face. Under the law now, SBC must allow cable companies access to its network at fees substantially lower than the network's operating cost.
Officials from Atlanta-based Cox -- which provides Internet service to 125,000 subscribers in San Diego County -- were not available for comment Tuesday.
Opponents of HR 1542, including the California Internet Service Providers' Association, say the law eliminates any incentive for the Bells to allow smaller, competing carriers access to their local network at a "reasonable cost."
California ISP Association officials say the Bells were given a government-enabled monopoly to build networks over the course of a century with ratepayer money. Therefore, according to the association, those networks should be used in the best interest of ratepayers -- even if that means forcing them to share with competitors.
"The success of the U.S. economy depends on open competition among many companies," the association's executive director Mike Jackman said in a statement issued Tuesday. "Tauzin-Dingell would recreate the old Bell monopoly and hinder the growth of affordable, high-speed Internet access.
"For the economic well-being of the state, please reject this bill!"
The ISP association also cites a white paper issued last Thursday by economists Robert Hall of Stanford University and William Lehr of Columbia University who warned: "The destructive enormity of the Tauzin-Dingell bill simply cannot be ignored or explained away."
"Your choice is stark," the pair wrote in a paper to Congress entitled Promoting Broadband Investment and Avoiding Monopoly. "You will either continue the beneficial open market policies of current law -- or return us to the days of one-company control over telephone services and the last-mile infrastructure that connects our homes to the information highways we depend on."
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Related Links:
San Diego Telecom Council: www.sdtelecom.org
Library of Congress (news - web sites): thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.html
Pacific Bell: www.pacbell.com
California Internet Service Providers' Association: www.cispa.org
Hall and Lehr's white paper: www.sandhillecon.com/research.htm |
