Posted 07/2000
Posted: 07/01/2000
MAIL BAG
Tauzin-Dingell Bill
Will Go Down in Flames
Sometimes I wish [X-CHANGE] readers could all live inside the Washington, D.C., beltway. Yes, I know this is a fate worse than death, but check this out. This morning I awoke to the latest rendition of a United States Telecom Association (www.usta.org) radio ad promoting the Tauzin-Dingell bill. You remember that one. Its purpose is to undo the Telecommunications Act of 1996 so the BOCs can offer interLATA data services (in other words, anything) without having to first open up their local markets to competition. This bill became necessary when the BOCs started losing all the court challenges they initiated against the act and the rules and regulations that were promulgated to implement it.
As the debate has unfolded, they have had to tweak their message as one fallacy after another in their arguments is revealed. Now there is no longer even a pretense of accuracy. This new approach (actually an iteration of an old message) is that rural America is being passed by for high-speed access to the Internet. In the background, you hear that lonesome whistle blow as the train zips through rural America--no depots out there. The answer to this problem, of course, is to stop applying "antiquated, outmoded telephone laws" (meaning those from way back in '96) to the Internet and pass the Tauzin-Dingell bill.
Presumably, rural Americans who want dial-up can have dial-up, which is what I have in the heart of deepest, darkest Bethesda, Md., about one mile from the D.C. line. So it must be that they can't get DSL or cable modem to enable high-speed access. Assuming for the moment that this is correct, whose fault is that? Most of rural America is serviced by incumbent LECs, none of which have any restrictions imposed on them today in terms of offering high-speed access-enabling service to their customers. The BOCs, which serve rural America, similarly have no restrictions upon them today in terms of deploying high-speed DSL, for instance, to their customers.
In the world of wireline service, you must have enabling technologies between the customer premises and the CO, as well as between the CO and the PoP to allow for high-speed Internet access. Guess who controls that in rural America? If you guessed the ILECs, you are right. We can get them from the PoPs to the Internet, but if the equipment is not deployed at the local end, it isn't going to happen.
There is no relationship between the ability to offer interLATA services (which thousands of ILECs, except four, can do today) and the ability of these incumbent local service providers to offer their customers high-speed Internet access today, other than their own reluctance to do so. This argument is a ruse, put up on behalf of four companies from amongst the entire 1,000-plus membership of the USTA. The rest of them just have to pay for it. You can pull the wool over the eyes of Congress only so long, and it is easier to do it in the midst of the campaign season. When the smokescreen clears, this anticompetitive initiative will go down in flames just like all the others.
Sincerely,
Ernie Kelly
Ernest B. Kelly III is the president of the Association of Communications Enterprises (ASCENT) in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at ebkelly@ascent.org.
