The Honorable Henry Hyde
2110 Rayburn House Office
Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Chairman Hyde:
At the Judiciary Committee hearing on
July 18, 2000, Chairman Tauzin testified that there were only two
high speed Internet points of presence in Louisiana. In fact, new
entrant Internet companies--Intermedia Communications, KMC Telecom,
McCleodUSA and ICG--along with AT&T, Sprint and WorldCom have
built twenty-five high capacity, 45 megabits per second or higher,
Internet points of presence (POPs) in Louisiana. Using Chairman
Tauzin’s definition of high-speed, 45 megabits per second, almost
90% of the households in Louisiana live within 50 miles of a high
speed Internet POP. Internet backbone providers serve all four LATAs
in Louisiana. Therefore, every Louisiana Internet service provider
and business can reach a high speed Internet POP by using Bell
South’s, or another local telephone company’s, telecommunications
facility. The president of the Competitive Telecommunications
Association, H. Russell Frisby, Jr., presented this information to
the Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer
Protection at the subcommittee’s hearing on May 25, 2000.
Louisiana is part of the nation wide success story in the
deployment of broadband Internet backbone facilities and services.
Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, our nation
has witnessed an explosion in the availability of broadband services
and Internet access. In four short years, dozens of Internet
backbone providers have blanketed the nation with over 1,000
high-speed Internet POPs. As the enclosed national maps show, now
over 94% of all Americans live within 50 miles of a high-speed
Internet backbone POP.
The remarkable growth in the number of Internet backbone
providers and the extension of high capacity connections to smaller
towns and cities across the country is compelling evidence that
Congress got it right when it passed the Telecommunications Act of
1996. The remaining challenge is the implementation of the Act’s
provisions that open the local telecommunications marketplace to
competition. Competition in the market for “last-mile” broadband
connections to homes and businesses is entirely dependent on the
Bell Companies fully implementing the Act’s local market opening
provisions. HR 1685, 1686 and Chairman Tauzin’s HR 2420 repeal those
crucial local market opening provisions for data communications
services.
Therefore, on behalf of the members of the Competitive Broadband
Coalition, I urge you to support competition and the accelerated
deployment of local broadband and Internet access services by
opposing HR 1685, 1686, and 2420.
Sincerely,
David Rubashkin
Managing Director
301-656-2474
# # #
The Competitive Broadband Coalition members
include the Association of Communications Enterprises (ASCENT), the
Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS), AT&T,
the Commercial Internet eXchange Association (CIX), CompTel
(Competitive Telecommunications Association), Cable & Wireless,
Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), Montana
Telecommunications Association, Personal Communications Industry
Association (PCIA), Sprint, Touch America and WorldCom. More
information can be found at http://www.competitivebroadband.org/1041/home.jsp
