All Eyes on Congress

Congress went into its summer recess July 31-Sept. 1 without passing an update to the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Obstacles on the path to reform included separate bills undergoing debate in the House and Senate, as well as arguments over controversial issues such as net neutrality and wireless preemption.

At the end of June, as members of the Senate Commerce Committee continued sorting out which amendments to attach to the Communications, Consumers’ Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006, Ed Merlis, senior vice president of law and policy for USTelecom, predicted a good chance new legislation will pass this year. “With an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the House and Sen. Stevens’ firm commitment to move legislation through the Senate, I fully expect that we will see a bill updating our communications laws on the president’s desk by the end of the year,” he said. USTelecom members mostly are large carriers and equipment makers; those groups have lobbied in favor of a national video franchising system.

So has Verizon Communications Inc. In another effort to sway members of Congress, the RBOC rounded up six groups — including the National Black Chamber of Commerce Inc. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — that expressed their support for the passage of video franchising laws without net neutrality protections. The organizations said the two matters should remain separate. In one letter to Congress, Hector M. Flores, national president of the 115,000-member League of United Latin American Citizens, wrote that the Senate bill, S.2686, correctly addresses video franchising, as well as net neutrality. The bill, introduced in early May by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, only would require the FCC to monitor ISPs, and give it authority to levy fines, and make reports to Congress. Flores, and representatives for the other groups, want to see Stevens’ bill pass with little acknowledgement of net neutrality. “We are concerned that proponents of ‘net neutrality’ may try to include language in the bill that could discourage innovation and competition by favoring some large corporate interests over others,” Flores wrote. “We don’t believe that the Internet should be heavily regulated to prevent Internet service providers from blocking access to Web content and applications since there is very little evidence to suggest that they would pursue such policies.”

Representatives for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors also all said they were happier with revisions to the bill. “While this bill is not one we would write in a perfect world, we believe a number of serious flaws in earlier drafts have been corrected to our satisfaction,” they said in a June 20 letter to Stevens. Among other matters, the representatives praised Stevens for preserving local government control of video franchising and granting municipalities authority to manage rights-of-way, and allowing courts, rather than the FCC, oversee rights-of-way disputes.

Still, opponents to a national video franchising system — including educators, applications providers and consumer advocates — maintained such rules would imperil the delivery of public educational programming and threaten states’ rights. They also kept up the call for net neutrality provisions that would prevent a two-lane Internet made up of a fast lane and slow lane.

In early June, the House passed the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act of 2006. It then went to the Senate Commerce Committee for consideration.