Senator requests hearing on FCC broadband Internet rulemaking

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has asked the Senate Commerce Committee to conduct a hearing concerning the FCC’s notice of proposed rulemaking that would redefine high-speed Internet services. Dorgan suggested the hearing in a letter sent last week to Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, D-S.C., chairman of the committee and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the communications subcommittee.

The FCC’s rulemaking would classify broadband Internet services as “information services with a telecommunications component,” rather than as a telecommunications service that would be subject to heavy regulation as dictated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Proponents of the rulemaking say it would put the Bell operating companies on a level playing field with cable sector, which owns a 70% share of the broadband Internet market. However, opponents of the rulemaking say it would irreparably harm competitive telecom carriers, because it would relieve the Bell companies of their duty to make data facilities available to CLECs at total element ling range incremental cost (TELRIC) pricing.

Dorgan said in a statement that “even a tentative decision to classify a wireline broadband connection to the Internet as something other than a telecommunications service may reflect a fundamental misreading of the intent and purpose of the [Act].”

H. Russell Frisby, Jr., president of the Competitive Telecommunications Association, echoed Dorgan’s concern, stating that the NPRM, if adopted, would “significantly restructure” the statutory telecommunications framework established by the Act.

“The FCC’s job is to implement the Act, not rewrite it,” Frisby said in a statement.

The comment period for the NPRM will extend 75 days after the notice first appears in the National Registry, which should occur within the next three weeks.

--Glenn Bischoff, senior news writer