WASHINGTON
(April 25) - House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman
Billy Tauzin (R-LA) is scheduled to deliver the following
remarks today at a full Committee hearing on his legislation,
H.R 1542,"The Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Bill of
2001":
"Good Morning. I would like to welcome our guests
this morning and thank Members for attending this important
hearing. Today, this committee will hear testimony
regarding the Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act,
legislation that I introduced yesterday with Mr. Dingell and
many of our colleagues. I am delighted that we are
conducting this hearing today so that all of the members of
this committee may participate in a discussion of the bill´s
merit. And I am also delighted that Chairman Upton will
mark the bill up in his subcommittee tomorrow.
"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 bill yesterday,
and this hearing will mark the beginning of a 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. As we will hear today from witnesses like
Peter Pitsch of Intel and Tim Regan of Corning, 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 look forward to testimony from our witnesses today.
And I look forward to my colleagues´ participation in this
extremely important debate."