FC: U.S. House to vote on Tauzin-Dingell broadband bill this week

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to consider the 
Tauzin-Dingell bill this week. It's a mysteriously-named piece of 
legislation, in the finest Washington style, and it's becoming suprisingly 
well-known all of a sudden, as Internet providers try to mobilize their 
subscribers.

Basically Tauzin-Dingell says the regional Bell companies (Verizon, 
Bellsouth, SBC, Qwest) would no longer be forced to lease their local lines 
to competing providers of high-speed Internet access.

As I wrote last week 
(http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,50620,00.html), the House Rules 
committee had a deadline of Monday afternoon for amendments to the 
Tauzin-Dingell. They're summarized here:
http://www.house.gov/rules/sum_broadband_107.htm

One interesting one from Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) that appears to be 
non-binding: "Points out that entertainment applications were driving 
broadband demand prior to litigation-related interruption of service and 
that broadband demand dropped significantly when Napster shut down.  It 
concludes that the Congress should review copyright laws to ensure that 
they keep up with technology while at the same time protecting artists and 
copyright holders from widespread infringement."

Text of HR1542:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.01542:
http://www.house.gov/rules/h1542.pdf

The committee reports (warning -- boring):
ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr083p1.txt
ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr083p2.txt

The U.S. Telecom Association (members include Verizon, Bellsouth, SBC, see 
http://www.usta.org/fullmem.html) supports the bill:
http://www.usta.org/on_the_hill/HR1542/support_HR1542.html

Sprint and its kin oppose the bill:
http://www3.sprint.com/PR/CDA/PR_CDA_Press_Releases_Detail/1,1579,2366,00.html

-Declan




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