Key players square off over broadband access legislation

With billions of dollars in Internet service fees and e-business revenues at stake, the companies with the most to win or lose in providing high-speed Internet access have taken sides on competing bills in the current (107th) Congress. The consequences of this legislative battle could affect the services for and costs of getting on the Internet for the next several years.

Broadband access is a generic term for a number of advanced and high-speed data services, such as Digital Subscriber Lines (DSLs), Internet access over cable TV, and satellite links. While dial-up lines normally top out at 56 thousand bits per second (56 Kbs) and sometimes require a time-consuming dialing routine, broadband access offers lines many times faster and without the access delays. Making broadband access easier and less expensive promises significant new benefits to businesses and consumers in greater productivity and new services.

The regional bell telephone companies, such as Verizon and Ameritech, favor a bill introduced by Reps. Billy Tauzin (R, LA) and John Dingell (D., MI). This bill, The Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act of 2001, H.R. 1542, is known in congressional shorthand as Tauzin-Dingell. Tauzin chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Dingell is the committee’s ranking Democrat..

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and cable companies have lined up behind the Broadband Competition and Incentives Act of 2001, bill H.R. 1697, introduced by Reps. Chris Cannon (R, UT) and John Conyers (D, MI), known as Cannon-Conyers. Both Cannon and Conyers serve on the House Committee on the Judiciary, where the bill has jurisdiction. Cannon is in his third term, while Conyers is the ranking Democrat on the committee.

Both sides view their respective bills as anti-monopoly measures. Tauzin and Dingell claim their bill will prevent consolidation of Internet access around large cable companies, such as AT&T and AOL/Time-Warner or the major Internet backbone providers, such as MCI/Worldnet. Tauzin-Dingell amends the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to allow the regional Bell companies to offer high-speed long-distance data services, without having to open up their local markets to competition, as the 1996 law requires. Tauzin-Dingell’s supporters say that without this bill, local cable companies, usually monopolies in their communities, will run off with broadband access, and leave the consumer with few options, bad service, and high prices.

The Cannon-Conyers bill sees the regional Bell companies as the monopolists, or at least companies trying to gain control over all local and long-distance voice and data traffic. The bill provides amendments to the existing anti-trust legislation preventing regional Bell companies from offering any long-distance services (voice or data) if they service 85 percent or more of the local business or residential telephone market. The Bell companies normally have more than 85 percent market penetration. The bill also prevents discriminatory taxes on broadband services, defined as tax rates higher than those currently imposed on local telecommunications services.

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