House Commerce Members Meet on Telecom Bill

[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
House Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) told a group of broadcasters in Washington yesterday that he and other committee members were having a meeting later that day to try to come to some "bypartisan agreement on a telecommunications bill," which is a rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Rep Barton plans to mark up the bill in his committee in March. The Senate Commerce Committee plans to mark up its own version of a telecom bill rewrite in March as well. Rep Barton told broadcasters gathered for an NAB-sponsored State Leadership Conference that the bill's primary component would be a so-called "video services protocol" for telephone companies, wireless companies and cable. He did not explain, though it sounded like a way to address the issue of streamlining the video-franchising process for new video entrants. Rep Barton said he did not see the committee introducing a second bill to handle some of the DTV issues -- cable conversion of a digital signal to analog, for one, multicasting must-carry is another -- that were stripped from the DTV hard date bill because of Senate rules. He also said that he did not think it was likely that those issues would be rolled into the telecom bill rewrite. Rep Barton also said that he didn't see moving a bill in this session that would confine satellite radio to a local-only service or one giving the FCC authority to mandate the broadcast flag digital content-protection technology.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6311820?display=Breaking+News&referral=SUPP
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