House passes Tauzin-Dingell

The House of Representatives this afternoon passed the controversial broadband deregulation bill sponsored by Billy Tauzin, R-La., and John Dingell, D-La., by a 273-157 vote, with five members abstaining.

The bill allows the Bell companies to provide in-region data long distance prior to gaining their Section 271 approvals, as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Further, the bill requires them to bring such services to all customers in their region within five years. However, Bell companies still would be prohibited from providing voice-over-IP services in regions for which they have yet to secure 271 approval.

But the bill fell short of giving the Bells the full relief they were seeking regarding high-speed data facilities. An amendment to the bill introduced by Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., and Steve Buyer, R-Ind., requires the Bell companies to make remote terminals and optical fiber available to competitors at “commercially reasonable” rates set by the FCC. The Bell companies had hoped they would be allowed to charge market-driven prices for those facilities. An amendment introduced by John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and Chris Cannon, R-Utah, that would have preserved existing rules concerning the unbundling of network elements was rejected.

The FCC also was given a bigger enforcement stick by an amendment introduced by Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., which would increase fines for Telecom Act violations to $1 million per violation from the current $120,000. It would also increase the fining cap from $1.2 million per violation to $10 million. These thresholds would be doubled for repeat offenders.

Analysts believe Tauzin-Dingell needed a wide margin in order to have any chance of passing the Senate, where Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-S.C., the powerful chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee--where the bill will likely land--stands in staunch opposition. Earlier this week, Hollings called Tauzin-Dingell “blasphemy.”

Proponents of the bill predicted the vote would pass by a comfortable margin, with supporting votes exceeding 300. That the vote fell well short of that did not dismay Herschel Abbott, vice president of governmental affairs for BellSouth.

“Two-thirds of the members of the U.S. Senate have endorsed one or more of the Senate bills that would speed deployment of high-speed data lines, so this consumer issue is definitely on their minds,” he said in a statement.

However, H. Russell Frisby, Jr., president of the Competitive Telecommunications Association, predicted Tauzin-Dingell ultimately will fail in the Senate.

“The Senate is focused on a number of important issues [but] creating a monopoly for high-speed Internet access is not one of them,” Frisby said in a statement. “Key members on both sides of the aisle have assured us that the bill will not see the light of day.”