Released: June 09, 2006

House telecom bill favors telcos

Source: By Stephen Labaton, New York Times (Free Registration)

The House of Representatives approved the most extensive telecommunications legislation in a decade on June 8, largely ratifying the policy agenda of the nation’s largest telephone companies. The bill passed by a lopsided vote of 321 to 101.

Supporters of the legislation said it would promote competition and lower costs by enabling the telephone companies to offer bundled packages of video, telephone, broadband, wireless and mobile phone services in new markets. They said the legislation was an important antidote to rapidly rising cable television subscription rates.

But even as the House took up the measure on Thursday, the political action had already swung to the Senate, which has been peppered by lobbyists and executives from many major telecommunications companies in recent days as it prepares to draft its own version. The prospects there are uncertain.

The House bill, sponsored by Representative Joe L. Barton, the Texas Republican who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, would make it much easier and cheaper for the phone companies to offer video services across the country by pre-empting the regulatory authority of municipal franchise officials. The telephone companies have been waging an expensive and protracted town-by-town war with their cable rivals, to offer video services.

The legislation would replace the regulatory role of more than 30,000 local franchising authorities with a national system supervised by the Federal Communications Commission. 

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