What's driving the next telecom law

WHAT'S DRIVING THE NEXT TELECOM LAW
[SOURCE: isen.blog, AUTHOR: David S. Isenberg]
[Commentary] The COPE (Communications, Promotion, and Enhancement) bill in the House of Representatives, and a similar, but more detailed Senate telecommunications bill are racing towards enactment by summer. The likely new law is propelled by the nation’s big telephone companies’ perceived business need to deliver video entertainment along with voice telephony and Internet services. The triple-application formula fits the old telco/cableco business model, i.e., collecting fees for delivering established applications and using these fees to subsidize the delivery network. This old model is threatened because today’s Internet can support voice and video, and infinitely more, delivered from its edges by third-party application providers. Indeed, third parties like Skype and Vonage are breaking out all over and rudimentary video services are popping up like dandelions. National TV franchising will replace thousands of local city-by-city agreements to ease telco entry into video services. This will institutionalize the voice, video and Internet service bundle so only big players, "rational competitors," as cablecos and telcos like to call themselves, can participate.
http://isen.com/blog/2006/05/whats-driving-next-telecom-law.html