SEARCH: Advanced Search

Today's Paper

PDF Version | Latest News

June 02, 2005

Wired for Progress

When Texas Rep. Joe Barton (R) assumed the chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee from retiring Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) in the last Congress, he also inherited something else. Namely, stewardship of a tangle of national telecommunication laws applying a mish-mash of regulations to a cluster of industries growing so rapidly that the government has been hard-pressed to keep up oversight.

Already, Barton’s panel has dug into the issues with a bill addressing the onset of universal digital television technology and is moving forward with legislation that will have a profound impact on the way the federal government regulates the Internet.

But the biggest mountain for Barton and other Members and Senators to climb in this arena will be a massive rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, something he estimates has a “75 percent chance” of coming to pass in the current Congress. Barton sat for a Q&A with Roll Call Executive Editor Morton M. Kondracke.

New Technologies Need Guidelines

Digitization and Internet Protocol — in essence, the language of the Internet — are driving a simple, but fundamental principle governing advances in technology today: a bit is a bit. Traveling America’s broadband networks at any given moment are billions of voice bits, data bits and video bits — each with no structural or technical difference relative to one another. This devolution of global communications into a universal, interchangeable format is known as Everything over Internet Protocol.

Regulatory Landscape Needs Re-evaluation

Nine years ago, Congress enacted the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a law fashioned for the analogue era of voice-based telephone service. Since that time, we have witnessed a communications revolution that has rivaled the Industrial Revolution for how it has transformed the way we do business. In 1996, electronic communication was mostly about analogue circuit-switched telephone service. Today, it is all about the Internet. It is now time to re-evaluate a regulatory landscape, which is based on a nearly decade-old law which mentions the Internet only in passing.

It’s Time to Update Telecom Laws

As chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, I believe that now is the time for Congress to come together to update our obsolete telecommunications laws.

Digital Divide Threatens Rural Areas

We are facing a growing divide between those with frequent and immediate access to information and those without. As people live and work outside the high-speed technology sphere, they lose access to valuable markets and vital information which addresses a broad range of issues necessary to a healthy society: health, education and political awareness.

Access to Telecom Tools Is Critical for Our Future

A universal high-speed broadband communications infrastructure is an absolute imperative for America’s future. Ubiquitous broadband deployment, in cities, suburbs and rural areas will provide the type of 21st century network necessary for America’s continued economic dynamism, job creation, education and public safety. Broadband should offer Americans the freedom to use any application and any device to access whatever legal content they wish, but the network and its freedoms should be extended to all Americans. Now is the time for adoption of a comprehensive national broadband policy. Among other items, our top three priorities should be to provide incentives for rural and “ex-urban” broadband expansion, hasten the digital television transition, and invest in targeted federal funding for communications research.

Competition Will Break Barriers

We are realizing the goal of the 1996 Telecommunications Act to “promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.”

Spectrum Offers a Path to Broadband Competition

With the impending acquisition of the two largest long-distance phone companies by the two largest Bell operating companies, it’s clear that the telecom wars surrounding the 1996 Telecommunications Act are drawing to a close. Last year’s decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to remand local loop access rules back to the Federal Communications Commission, and the Bush administration’s decision not to appeal it, effectively ended the prospect of local wireline telephone competition. The mergers are regrettable, but they are just the final shovels of dirt on the efforts of Congress to engender local telephone competition in the 1996 act. As one leading telecom analyst said, “This is the end of World War I — the Bells vs. AT&T and MCI. Now, World War II, among the phone, cable and tech companies, is about to begin.”