By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Friday, August 2, 2002; 10:44 AM
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking Republican on the influential Commerce Committee, yesterday introduced a bill aimed at breaking the congressional stalemate on how best to promote broadband Internet service for American consumers.
The Consumer Broadband Deregulation Act of 2002 would slash regulations restricting the ability of established local phone companies to offer long-distance broadband services to residential consumers, but in a break with several competing bills in Congress would not deregulate the business market.
Long-distance phone company representatives were not immediately available
for comment, but at least one Baby Bell has already criticized the bill.
"We are frankly puzzled by the apparent failure of the bill to provide regulatory relief for broadband services in the business arena," said BellSouth Vice President of Governmental Affairs Herschel Abbott. "Business customers already have the most
competitive choices for high-speed data service and no company is dominant."
Most residential broadband Internet users currently connect over cable systems, but the local phone companies dominate the business market. The bill would increase the power of the Baby Bells to offer their services to American homes.
Federal regulations prevent this from happening until the Baby Bells open their own historical local calling areas to competitors. Commerce Committee members John Breaux (D-La.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) have introduced bills that would eliminate these regulations.
Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.) introduced legislation to speed broadband rollout through hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to fund studies, tax credits, loans and other spending efforts.
In the House, the Tauzin-Dingell bill -- named for House Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and ranking Democrat John Dingell (D-Mich.) -- would completely free the Baby Bells to offer long-distance service to residential and business customers, eliminating restrictions that were established in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Tauzin-Dingell is the leading broadband bill so far, having been
approved in the House of Representatives. But Hollings has frozen
progress on the bill in his committee.
With the high-speed Internet access debate at a stalemate on Capitol Hill, the Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to skip the legislative process entirely and change the definition of the kind of broadband access that telephone companies can offer. If the FCC reclassifies digital subscriber-line (DSL)
connections as an "information service" rather than a "telecommunications service," all broadband service would be, in essence, regulation-free.
