Telco Critics Hit Telecom Draft

A draft bill being circulated on Capitol Hill reflects a compromise that House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) and Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) struck with Democratic Reps John Dingell of Michigan and Edward Markey of Massachusetts. Although it has a deregulatory thrust, the House draft contains various digital-age consumer and competitive safeguards, including mandates on broadband-network owners to ensure nondiscriminatory treatment of unaffiliated Web merchants, a policy called network neutrality. A huge fight is expected before net neutrality principles are enshrined in law. “The reality is that what’s going to emerge for consideration is going to look nothing like the draft because I can't believe [House lawmakers] would spend a lot of time looking at the draft as it is now,” said David McClure, chairman and CEO of the U.S. Internet Industry Association. “There are too many problems. It’s just unworkable.” In reviewing the House draft, Progress & Freedom Foundation senior fellow Randolph May indicated that lawmakers made unsupported predictions about consumer technology preferences in linking “streamlined franchising treatment” to “certain types of not-yet-offered integrated Internet functionalities.”
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
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