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From CTCNet Policy Bulletin, 11/15/05

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So, When's the Telecommunications Act Coming?
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Attempts by Congress to overhaul the complex
Telecommunications Act of 1996 began in earnest this past
summer, amid optimistic predictions by lawmakers regarding
the pace of assembling, debating, and considering
legislation covering a wide range of telecommunications
issues. And then they actually started putting their
thoughts on paper...

To be fair, the sheer range and level of potential issues
involved in any overhaul are staggering. The 1996 Act is
widely considered to be an imperfect set of compromises, at
best, predicated upon the assumption that information and
communications services would remain relatively fixed within
a presumably stable environment. The spare usage of the word
Internet itself demonstrated the limited amount of
forethought devoted to the convergence of services and
service providers that would occur in short order after the
Act's passage.

How could any one piece of legislation, however, begin to
capture a range of issues including distinctions between
" telecommunications" versus "information" services; media
concentration and ownership; privacy and security; free
expression versus indecency; equitable service availability
and rates; competing legal and regulatory authority of
federal, state, and local government to set terms of
service; and basic choices regarding which technologies and
standards will ultimately face what hurdles for the
opportunity to be used at work or at home, in communities
and the institutions which serve them?

Rumblings abound that any initial attempts at
telecommunications overhaul traditionally turn upon debates
regarding the concerns of cable companies versus phone
companies versus "the public". Congress's initial attempts
at telecommunications overhaul this year, namely the
" Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act" (S. 1504) and
the "Video Choice Act of 2005" (S.1349/HR 3146), would only
seem to reinforce that perception.

S. 1504 sponsored by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) is touted as a
starting point for bringing "regulatory parity" to cable,
telephone, and wireless services, while reducing barriers
for services like IP television. It has, however, also
raised simultaneous concerns among cable interests that
would be forced to open their markets to traditional phone
companies that now want to deliver content online;
municipalities and states that would lose their regulatory
and franchise granting authority; and community-oriented
technology service providers that would lose the guarantee
of public interest obligations available at present.

Likewise, S. 1349/H.R. 3146-- sponsored respectively by
Sens. Gordon Smith (R-OR) and John Rockefeller (D-WV), and
Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN0 and Albert Wynn (D-MD)-- would
remove municipal authority to negotiate public interest
commitments from cable companies that want to enter local
markets, while also reducing the barriers for phone
companies to enter the traditional cable marketplace.

Other comprehensive attempts at overhaul are also underway,
particularly "draft legislation" crafted by staffers for
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) and
Ranking Member Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), and House Energy
and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet
Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Ranking Member
Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA). An earlier draft released this
past summer-- requiring phone-based video providers to abide
by a number of statutory obligations which currently only
apply to cable services-- actually appeared to reflect an
early concerted effort at collaboration among the
committee's and subcommittee's majority and ranking members.
The current 70-page version, however, instead pushes a
notion of "comparable" instead of "equal" treatment of
phone-based video services and cable.

In a new landscape with new services coming from existing
players transforming into new entities, and new players
poised to deliver services competitive to existing ones
through new platforms and tools, an over-reliance on a
" phone versus cable" perspective ignores other dynamics at
work. This means acknowledging, at a minimum, the interests
of small versus large companies, urban versus rural markets,
community versus corporate and independent versus
institutional providers. It also means awareness of other
arenas, including wireless, software and equipment, radio
and television broadcasters, satellite firms, utility
companies and broadband over powerline providers, and even
online services themselves, ranging from content creators to
e- commerce support.

Key factors ensuring that even the barest of
telecommunications reform legislation will not be ready for
consideration or passage before the end of the 2005 include:
Hurricane Katrina relief; ongoing strife regarding the Iraq war,
attempts to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat; contentious budget
reconciliation and appropriations; mid-term Congressional
elections; increasingly hostile inter- and intra-party relations in
Congress; a constantly shifting landscape of telecommunications
industry mergers; and rapidly evolving technology developments.
Add to that mix a number of implementation and enforcement
issues still weighing in the courts, regulatory agencies,
and legislatures from the last telecommunications rewrite,
and of only one thing can we be assured: that Washington is,
indeed, abuzz with activity and speculation around a process
that is widely understood to take many, many months of
hearings, negotiations, and lobbying to eventually turn into
legislation that, if passed, will be guaranteed to be
woefully inadequate to address current and future demands of
public interest groups and industry interest groups alike.
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Telecommunications Policy Resources
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The latest edition of the Community Media Review, published
by the Alliance for Community Media, features a "People's
Guide to the Telecommunications Act of 2006". Guest edited
by longtime ACM and CTCNet member Lauren-Glenn Davitian,
this resource covers the trends and prospects ten years
after the landmark legislation, as well as current and
emerging issues from the public interest, private sector,
regulatory and legislative arenas around telephone and
common carrier, broadcast and mass media, cable, broadband
and Internet technology and services.

People's Guide to the Telecommunications Act of 2006
http://www.cctv.org/peoplesguide.htm HearUsNow is an online resource that explains complex issues on major media, technology and communications issues and trends. HearUsNow is designed to help educate people directly served by CTCs through easy-to understand consumer guides and advice on products and services, in order to find
ways to connect to organizations around the country working
on issues of interest and concern. Take a moment to share
your media and telecommunications experiences, and take
advantage of the tools and information available.
HearUsNow http://www.hearusnow.org