Copyright 2000 Federal News Service, Inc.
Federal News Service
March 28, 2000, Tuesday
SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 836 words
HEADLINE:
PREPARED TESTIMONY OF CONGRESSMAN W.J. 'BILLY' TAUZIN CHAIRMAN
BEFORE THE SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE SUBCOMMITTEE ON
TELECOMMUNICATIONS, TRADE AND CONSUMER PROTECTION
SUBJECT -
BROADBAND ACCESS IN RURAL AMERICA
BODY:
Good
morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to testify before your
Subcommittee on Communications.
Broadband, or rather the lack thereof,
is an issue that not many are talking about right now. Most of what we hear is
that the Act is working- so leave it alone. The fact is, however, that the Act
was never intended to address Broadband deployment except in
the most general terms- i.e. that advanced services should be deployed and that
the FCC should forbear when necessary. Despite this, a huge sector of our nation
is not receiving.., or even capable of receiving true high speed Broadband
services. The reason is because hundreds of communities are not near any of the
hubs that enable access to Internet backbones - the real super highways.
Very few companies are building high speed gathering lines all the way
from the backbone points of access to the rural communities because it is
expensive. While some are, like Montana Power and utility consortiums, their
lines will not extend to many rural areas. Put simply, it will be a long, long
time before these towns and rural areas are adequately served the way that urban
areas are.
There is, however, an alternative to making our constituents
wait. We can adopt a coherent broadband policy that gives all willing players
equal treatment under the law and regulations, just as Congress intended when it
added Section 706 to the '96 Act.
Broadband is an all new communications
medium, and to quote the FCC "... it is operationally and technologically
distinct..." from plain old telephone or cable service - or satellite or
cellular for that matter, even though it can be delivered over some of the same
infrastructure.
While all companies can compete for local customers,
including the RBOCs, only one segment of the telecom industry is prohibited from
engaging in deployment of the high speed broadband gathering lines needed to
connect our rural communities to Internet backbones: The RBOCs.
Despite
that these Companies already have fiber in the ground connecting most of these
rural communities to hub cities where backbone infrastructure exists, the Bells
are still prohibited from hauling any data traffic because the FCC- not an act
of Congress- has said that RBOCs are prohibited from sending any traffic across
those 20th Century LATA lines drawn by the Courts almost 20 years ago. Those
regulations and LATA boundaries were implemented to separate local and long
distance calling areas for purposes of regulating VOICE TELEPHONY- not the new
high speed Broadband data that is revolutionizing American communications.
Nonetheless, the FCC and many of the new competitors created by the Act,
see the data-LATA restriction as an effective club to use to force the RBOCs to
agree to market opening conditions that were never contemplated by the Act.
These parties are not concerned about the fact that many of our constituents,
yours and mine, are being left out of the Broadband revolution.
While
these parties are out aggressively deploying high speed gathering lines and
laying new backbone infrastructure, they don't want any competition for their
business models because the status quo under FCC regulations gives them greater
leverage to negotiate higher carriage rates if local customers can't get to the
backbones any other way.
So, the bottom line is this: rural consumers
and communities are the ones being left behind while the FCC continues its
regulatory gamesmanship.
The Bill I have introduced, along with Mr.
Dingell, in the House would change all of this. It enjoys the sponsorship of 180
members of the House, and is gaining momentum.
The Bill would:1. Promote
the deployment of broadband services by providing an incentive for all companies
to develop and deliver advanced telecommunications services. Senator Burns has
estimated that less than 2 percent of Americans who are online have access to
cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies.
2. Create
more consumer choice by allowing both existing wires into the home- telephone
and cable- to compete head-to-head in the delivery of broadband services.
3. Grant ISPs the right to collocate and interconnect with Bell company
high-speed data networks so that consumers are guaranteed freedom of choice, and
all ISPs have access to at least one broadband pipe.
My legislation
would NOT:
1. Allow any Bell Company to carry any voice long-distance
service over any high-speed, packet-switched network until the Bell company is
authorized by the FCC to enter that business.
2. Deny states from
regulating core telecommunications services. A telecommunications service would
continue to be regulated as a telecommunications service, whether carried over a
circuit- or packet switched network.
3. Alter the Legal Obligation of
RBOCs to fully comply with the open market requirements of the 1996 Act,
including the 14 point checklist requirements of Section 271.
Thank you,
and I yield back any time that I might have remaining.
END
LOAD-DATE: March 30, 2000 
