WASHINGTON (April
26) – House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin
(R-LA) is scheduled to deliver the following remarks today at a
Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee markup of his bill,
H.R 1542, "The Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act
of 2001”:
“Good Morning. Today, the subcommittee will
mark up H.R. 1542 the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act,
legislation that I introduced Tuesday with Mr. Dingell and many of
our colleagues. I am delighted that the day has arrived that
we can begin moving this important legislation. I want to
thank Chairman Upton for his leadership and his initiative to move
this bill through Subcommittee today.
“Mr. Dingell and I have worked with many of our colleagues for the
past two years attempting to finish the deregulation begun by the
Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 1999, we introduced H.R.
2420, a bill to deregulate the provision of high speed data and
Internet access services. We reintroduced that same bill on
Tuesday, and the full Committee held a comprehensive hearing
yesterday and today we continue the process through which the 107th
Congress will consider this legislation.
“Broadband services offer consumers new ways to communicate, learn,
do business, and entertainment themselves. But broadband
services are not nearly as available as their slower, dial-up
counterparts. While broadband deployment has begun to speed up
in urban and densely-populated suburban areas, broadband deployment
is almost nonexistent in rural areas.
“Many of the reasons for the disparity in the deployment of
broadband services are economic. Broadband is a
capital-intensive investment, the costs of which can be recovered
more rapidly if they are being spread over more, and more-lucrative,
customers. But that does not mean that Congress should not be
concerned about the disparity in deployment. Areas in which
broadband services are not available are in jeopardy of being left
out of the Information Age. Internet-dependent businesses will
not locate in rural areas if broadband is unavailable.
“To give carriers a greater economic incentive to deploy broadband
services more rapidly everywhere in the United States, Congress
needs to complete the deregulation begun by the
Telecommunications Act by deregulating broadband
services. Currently, there are regulations imposed upon the
broadband services and facilities provided by incumbent local
exchange carriers (ILECs) that are not imposed upon any other
broadband carriers.
“ILECs must provide their facilities, even brand new facilities, on
an unbundled basis to competitors at regulated prices. ILECs
must resell their broadband services to competitors at wholesale
rates, which no other carrier is required to do. In addition,
the Bells are prohibited from offering long-distance data services,
which deprives them of the efficiencies that can be gained from
offering end-to-end services.
“These restrictions give the ILECs little incentive to deploy new
services and facilities. Why spend the money to roll out
broadband when your competitors can use your own network to take
your customers? These types of rules might have made sense for
basic telephone service. But cable companies control 75
percent of the broadband market, so the ILECs cannot be considered
dominant by any stretch of the imagination.
“I am not suggesting that we subject the cable companies to the same
rules that are currently being applied to the ILECs. I applaud
the cable companies for aggressively rolling out broadband services
and I hope that government continues to stay out of their way so
that the cable companies can continue to do so. But what it
means is that ILECs should have deregulatory parity with cable
companies in the broadband market.
“Broadband is a nascent market that does not need regulation.
What it needs is the ability to thrive, similar to what happened
with the wireless industry when government stayed out of its
way. Wireless thrived in the absence of regulation and
broadband will as well. But broadband needs to be deregulated,
and we have introduced this bill to accomplish that goal.
“This bill provides the right amount of deregulation for broadband
services. It rejects the application of antiquated telephone
rules to a new market like broadband. And it seeks to maximize
investment and innovation in new facilities.
“After many strong years of growth, our tech sector is experiencing
very difficult times. How can we help stimulate the tech
sector? If we deregulate the broadband market, we will witness
an acceleration in broadband deployment. An acceleration in
broadband deployment is exactly what the tech sector needs to get
itself back on its feet. Broadband services will bring new
opportunities to many of our constituents. And the deployment
of broadband facilities will hopefully restore what has become the
most important sector of our economy.
“I am very pleased that the Subcommittee is marking up this
legislation this morning and I look forward to continuing the
legislative process on this bill in the weeks to come.”