- Tauzin Dingell will
stimulate competition in the high-speed Internet market - giving
consumers more choices, lower prices and more services.
The cable industry currently controls over 70% of the high-speed Internet market because they compete under different rules than phone companies. Even though they control the high-speed Internet market, cable companies' high-speed service is completely unregulated while phone companies face regulations on DSL service that make it more difficult and more expensive to deploy and operate. Regulating one provider in a nascent market stifles competition - raising prices for those consumers who can get high-speed connections and leaving millions more with no access at all.
Tauzin-Dingell allows telephone companies to compete under the same rules as the cable industry when building and operating national networks for providing high-speed Internet services to all consumers. The high-speed Internet market is an emerging market, and allowing full-fledged market competition - as Congress did in the wireless market - will bring residential consumers lower prices, better service, and new innovations.
- Tauzin-Dingell
guarantees that underserved areas will get high-speed access.
The bill requires local phone companies to upgrade their facilities to provide high-speed Internet access throughout the country - in inner cities, small towns, and rural areas. Inner cities and rural areas are the parts of the country least likely to get high-speed service today, despite being the areas that need it the most. High-speed access can be a lifeline to rural areas and inner cities, but current rules make it difficult and expensive to offer high-speed service to all areas.
By lifting rules that inhibit competition, Tauzin-Dingell will make it possible for phone companies to offer high-speed service throughout the country. And the bill's requirement that local phone companies upgrade 100% of their central offices to provide high-speed service within five years guarantees that inner cities and small towns won't be left behind - closing the digital divide.
- Tauzin-Dingell
keeps the Internet Open.
Cable companies do not give non-discriminatory access to independent content providers and ISPs, and their continued dominance of the Internet restricts growth in these areas. Cable already controls much of the content on the Internet and if they continue to dominate the high-speed Internet they will be free to block or otherwise restrict access to non-affiliated sites.
Tauzin-Dingell creates effective competition to cable, while guaranteeing access to DSL for ISPs and content providers. Consumers will be able to choose their ISP over DSL and CLECs will be able to access phone company networks to offer high-speed service. This assures the continued robust growth and development of the Internet. Tauzin-Dingell contains a statutory right of access for consumers, a statutory right of interconnection for ISPs and a statutory right to collocate for ISPs - guaranteeing the most open Internet platform in the country. Furthermore, the bill does NOT change any of the current regulations which guarantee competitors access to telephone networks for the purpose of competing for local phone service.
- Tauzin-Dingell
provides a boost to the sagging high tech economy.
The Federal Reserve Board credits information technology with more than 2/3 of the productivity spurt that drove the economy in the 1990s. The tech sector of the economy has driven nearly a third of the real GDP growth since 1995. However since Labor Day of this year NASDAQ investors have lost approximately $3 billion dollars and the tech sector has laid off nearly 100,000 workers.
As Microsoft CEO Bill Gates recently noted, the chief barrier to a high-tech revival is the slow pace of the rollout of high-speed Internet connections. Congress can address this problem by promoting competition in the high-speed Internet market and stimulating the deployment of high-speed services through the Tauzin-Dingell bill. Both Intel and Corning testified at the House Commerce committee hearing on the bill that Tauzin-Dingell would provide just such a stimulus effect.
