Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: The planned Communications Act Re-write of the New(t) Congress
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 20:16:48 -0500
Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 18:54:16 -0500 (EST) From: Diana Jarvis <daj () panix com> To: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu> n Tue, 17 Jan 1995, David Farber wrote:
I have paraphrased a message from a source who claims that this has been substantiated by at least two other sources. PLEASE note that I can neither personally confirm or deny this information at this time, so...
Since I have been following the legislation deregulating the Telcos, and since I have with me a copy of the new Senate Republicans' policy proposal for telecommunications legislation released this past week, I thought I'd check this repost against the Republicans' proposal, and tell you what I could personally confirm or deny. . . .
For what it's worth, my impeccable source in DC just called to tell me how the Communications Act Re-write will appear when a carefully orchestrated scenario runs its course. By Feb 15th, the RBOCs expect their bill (yet to be introduced) to pass both the House & Senate, with accelerated Hearings. All the deals have all been made over the holidays with the critical opposition that stopped last year's bill: the IXCs, cable, etc.
The date being bandied about for the telecom legislation is July 4, not anytime in February. The seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) are generally credited with trashing last year's bill, S.1822, most of which has been resurrected in the Republican's policy proposal.
The bill will turn residential, small town, suburban, and rural _local access_ into a permanent natural monopoly with a single gateway for services TO the home. The BOCs don't think there are any services FROM the home business worth considering, other than voice and low-speed return data for games. The RBOCs, have given up on medium to large customers. They realize that they already lost that market to AT&T and the niche players, MCI & Sprint. But by controlling access to the home, they figure they can control everything else, and have a chance at getting a few large users by packaging the residences for them. This way they might actually gain market share in the IXC business. AT&T knows they can't fight this Congress without looking like the spoiler, so they will take their chances on radio access, manufacturing, and the more lucrative businesses.
The Clinton administration has always anticipated that there would be one large bundled fiber to each house. Since everyone seems to think curbside-to-house is the most expensive leg of the NII, most commentators seem to agree with this. It isn't in either S. 1822 or the Republican policy proposal, both of which allow competition in local phone service and which remove line-of-business restrictions against manufacturing and long distance service.
The bill will have the right incentives for the major MSOs to lease-back their coax for the LECs to run. Malone already said so.
Nothing in the legislation refers to such a lease-back. It sounds like this comes from an interview with or press release by John Malone, the CEO of TCI [The RBOCS] have come up with a legalistic strategy that empowers
the FCC to slow down any competitive forces using alternative carriage [using radio]. This will take three steps: 1) Federal pre-emption of States' rights in ALL communications fields -- wire, radio, switching, rates, whatever. But State's rights are a Republica mantra. To prevent this looking like more centralized government (which it is): 2) An "ombuds panel" will be set up under the FCC, but with extraordinary powers to bypass the Administrative Procedures Act and expedite the CFRs without 11 months of notice, etc., to settle all disputes between the States and the Federal government on communications matters. This will be presented as State oversight to protect universal, vaguely defined, services and the like.
In telecommunications, as in most other areas of the law, the general trend has been towards federal preemption of state law. This is going to be virtually guaranteed in the next telecom bill.
and to make sure none of this unravels too early: 3) the Justice Dept. will be cut out of all antitrust matters related to communications.
S. 1822 required every entry into a previously forbidden market to be approved by both the FCC and the Attorney General; the FCC would approve each petition pursuant to its mandate to serve the "pbulic interest" and the Attorney General would examine each petition for antitrust concerns. The Republicans Policy Proposal makes no mention of these, and in fact contemplates a fundamental reorganization of the administrative agencies supervising all telecom providers. This may be what the writer is referring to.
What can kill it is the State pre-emption clause. The Governors of the five, so-called "seed" states in telecom (FL, NY, CA, IL and CO) are going to want something big in return for blessing pre-emption.
I've never heard of "seed" states in terms of telecom reform. Anybody have any idea what this refers to?
However, the networks would love to drop foreign ownership provisions and they might relent on data over former video channels -- which they really don't understand anyway -- for a chance to make better deals with foreign entities.
All legislation provides for reform of current foreign ownership provisions. I haven't looked at these sections closely, but I'm assuming that bans against foreign ownership will be relaxed pursuant to GATT and to reciprocal behavior by our trading partners.
The Republicans are counting on cable & telcos to behave themselves and not raise rates until after the next Presidential election.
Their rates -- referred to as "tarriffs" -- are set by the FCC. This is why the telephone, cable, and broadcast industries are considered "regulated industries."
There is nothing to stop the steamroller now but if they can't get the bill signed into law by Feb 15th, the deals are all off, I am told.
This is really odd, given that there is no Feb. 15th deadline. There is a House bill out there which I haven't seen, H. #411 (that bill number was specifically requested for it), but to my knowledge the Republicans' policy proposal hasn't even been reduced to a bill yet. I'm not sure where the Republican policy proposal is on the Net. The full title of it is "Senate Republicans' Proposal on Telecommunications Legislation: Executive Summary, Outline, and Policy Framework Overview." The subtitle is "Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995: A Pro-competitive, De-regulatory Policy Prescription." It was released in early January. The subtitle is misleading, since it is not yet a bill, but no doubt when it becomes one that will be the title. If anyone knows where it is on the Net, please post! Diana Jarvis <daj () panix com>
Current thread:
- The planned Communications Act Re-write of the New(t) Congress David Farber (Jan 16)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: The planned Communications Act Re-write of the New(t) Congress David Farber (Jan 22)
- Re: The planned Communications Act Re-write of the New(t) Congress David Farber (Jan 23)