Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006
COMMUNICATIONS OPPORTUNITY, PROMOTION, AND ENHANCEMENT ACT OF 2006 -- (House of Representatives - June 08, 2006)
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 1/2 minutes.
Mr. Chairman, so again we hear the argument that this is going to lower cable rates. And it will lower cable rates, I don't deny that, on the good side of town, which is where they are going with their Harvard Business School 3-by-5 card, ``go to the wealthy side of town and offer them a package of broadband services to compete against the cable companies.'' Rates are going down.
But the problem is on the other side of town, once this bill passes, once the telephone company comes into town, the cable company is no longer bound by the agreement that it made with the city. So the cable industry, and they testified to this in the committee, they can then raise rates on the parts of town that the telephone company is not going to go to and provide cable service.
So you are going to wind up with this incredible situation where we, that is, Congressmen in our parts of town, we are going to have lower cable rates. But people on the other side of town, and you don't have to be a summa cum laude, you from Harvard Business School, to understand this, the people on the other side of town are not going to get this service, because obviously the Republicans are protecting AT&T and Verizon by prohibiting us having this discussion here on the floor.
They won't even let the discussion take place, because they know that is what is going to happen, that the other side of town isn't going to get this service, because AT&T doesn't want us to have to mandate that if they are going into the town, they just can't cherry-pick the good parts of town. They are going to have to do everybody. And if they don't do everybody, what do you think is going to happen when there is no competition? Rates are going up in that part of town, because that part of the town will be a monopoly.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 1/2 minutes.
Mr. Chairman, here is the really perverse part of this. The telephone company is going to come into town, and they are going to start offering lower rates on the good part of town, as they are delivering the service.
The people on the other side of town, the poorer part of town, are going to say, hey, do we get the lower rates too in town? Because under the cable-negotiated agreement with the city, everyone got the same rate in town.
Well, the telephone company will not offer that same lower rate to the other part of the town, only to the people on the good part of town, which is where they are going. So we said to the majority, the Republicans, well, let's make sure everyone in town gets that lower rate, because now we know what the rate should be for that community, because they are offering it to the good side of town.
The Republicans say, oh, no, we are not going to give the lower rate to the poor side of town where the telephone company is not going to, because they are not going there. And the cable industry says, fine, we are going to raise rates on that side of town because the telephone company is telling us we are not going there.
So we are going to have again this crazy situation where they are going to the homes, and we are going to wind up with this perverse result where they are going to the good side of town, they are going to the good communities. They are going to have lower cable rates because they are going to have competition. And the telephone companies have told us over and over and over again they are not going to the other side of town.
They are not going to the poorer communities, and we object to any amendment by Democrats on the floor that will make us do the poor part of town, that will make us go to the other side of town. We are going to fight it and we are going to ask the Republicans to not even allow for a debate on the House floor that will help the people on the poor side of town get the lower rates.
That is what this bill at its heart is all about tonight, the ability of the telephone companies to cherry-pick the wealthiest families in America to have competing cable service.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, this bill is a failure. It fails the challenge to ensure that this broadband technology will be deployed in every neighborhood in America. The Bell Companies oppose it, and the Republicans are not going to allow us to even have that debate here on the House floor.
Why is it important? Because in a post-GATT, post-NAFTA world, we have to make sure that every family and every child in every family has access to this high tech skillset which can only come from access to this broadband technology. The telephone companies do not want the responsibility to build out into the poor side of the town, the Republicans have not built that responsibility into the bill, and they have prohibited the Democrats from making that amendment. And their bill also fails the Internet. It fails the nondiscriminatory history of the Internet which has required, which has made possible for entrepreneurs and individuals on a nondiscriminatory basis, to use the Internet.
We want to have a debate on net neutrality. All the Republicans are willing to give to the proponents of the Net neutrality, the central constitutional protection built into the Internet for the last 20 years, is 10 minutes. That is a disgrace. The whole way we are making this bill is really a tribute to the Republican control of Congress and their lack of willingness to have full and open debate on the most important post-GATT, post-NAFTA issues we could debate, the access to a 21st century skillset and the ability for entrepreneurs to use the information superhighway to create the new jobs. I urge a ``no'' vote on final passage on this bill.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I might add that I am not in opposition to the manager's amendment except to the extent to which the manager's amendment does not include language on nondiscrimination. Language which would ensure that all parts of a community receive the lower cable rates, not just the good parts of town where the telephone companies are going to deploy.
There is no provision in here that deals in a meaningful way with net neutrality to ensure that the Internet as we know it is preserved, protected for the future, that entrepreneurs know that they can have access to it without having to pay a discriminatory entry fee, that the telephone companies cannot tip these entrepreneurs upside down and shake money out of their pockets. That is the problem that I have with the manager's amendment. It is not that I object to what is in it. It is really what is not in it, what should have been included, what would have led to this bill being characterized as a bill which was balanced.
By the way, the bill which we had agreed upon on a handshake deal, Democrats and Republicans, was a balanced bill. It did include protections for the Internet. It did include protections for rate payers. But all of that, obviously, was objected to by the Bell companies.
Let me just make this point once again. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the creation of the Internet. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the development of the World Wide Web. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the browser in its development. In fact, AT&T was asked if they wanted to build the Internet, the packet switch network in 1966. They turned the contract down when the government went to them. And so a company named BB&N, Bolt, Betranick and Newman got the contract. It was a very small company, not AT&T.
They have had nothing to do with the development of the Internet, but now at this late date, they want to come in and to create these bottleneck control points that allow them to extract Internet taxes, Internet fees from companies and individuals who have been using the Internet for a generation.
It is this absence of nondiscriminatory language in the manager's amendment and in the bill to which I object, and I think as time goes on and, obviously, the majority has been unwilling to have this debate in the full light of day. We will be finishing this some time around midnight. And the key amendments, of course, were not even put in order for us to debate, with the exception of net neutrality which we will have 10 minutes to the proponents of net neutrality to make their case. You can barely explain the concept in 10 minutes, much less have a full debate on what the implications of it are. But that is all part of the plan by the telephone companies and the Republican majority not to have a full debate on it.
But the consequences for our country are going to be dramatic in the long run. It has taken a long time to get to this point where America has been the leader in the Internet. And tonight monopolies have arrived, finally, belatedly, as they have come to understand this technology. But a little bit of history is important to understand.
They never purchased their first foot of fiber optic until the government broke up AT&T in 1984. They never deployed their first broadband technology until 1997 after we passed the Telecommunications Act. It has always taken the government to ensure that AT&T, these telephone companies, do, in fact, innovate, such as the word can be used, when you are describing a telephone company.
The real storyline over the last 20 years has been hundreds of thousands of smaller companies using the Internet, innovating on the Internet, creating jobs and revolutionizing not only our own country's ability to communicate and create jobs, but the rest of the world's as well.
So I do not object to the manager's amendment for what is in it but rather for what is not in it. And, unfortunately, the same thing can be said for amendments which are not going to be debated here tonight because of the Republican recalcitrance, their unwillingness to have a full blown debate on perhaps the central growth issue that we will have before the Congress on this session.
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for raising this very important issue, and really, since the beginning of my career on the Telecommunications Subcommittee, working with Mickey Leland from your district, adding in language that ensured a larger percentage of minority participation in legislation, it is without question a high goal.
What I think we all want to be sure of here is that in communities it does not take resources away from municipalities that might have gone to those very same communities, but I think we can work together in order to accomplish that.
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Mr. MARKEY. I yield myself the balance of the time.
This debate is a travesty. We are allowed 10 minutes to explain this fundamental change in the whole history of the Internet. It is pretty much a joke.
If two consumers go into a car dealership and one wants to buy a Ferrari and another decides to buy a Ford Taurus, that is their choice. The Ferrari is expensive and has all sorts of bells and whistles. But once those two customers drive the Ferrari and the Taurus off the lot, the car dealership shouldn't be allowed to tell them where they can and cannot drive. We don't have certain roads or destinations just for Ferraris or just for Taurus drivers, and the auto dealership certainly shouldn't be permitted to put up new toll booths to extract fees on those highways. That limits freedom. That is what the Republicans and the Bell companies are doing tonight.
If you like the way the Internet is today, vote for the Markey amendment. If you don't want new broadband taxes, fees imposed upon the Internet, vote for the Markey amendment. If you agree with the National Religious Broadcasters, with the Gun Owners Association, Common Cause, the Christian Coalition, and the ACLU, you vote for the Markey amendment tonight. Because if you don't, there is going to be a fundamental change in the whole history of the Internet. You can't put together a coalition like that unless something fundamental is happening in America. It goes to voices, all of these organizations who feel it is going to be limited, and choices, the choices that consumers are going to have and the choices that entrepreneurs are going to have in getting onto this information highway without having to pay special fee or tax to the telephone companies or cable companies. Vote ``aye'' for the Markey amendment. Preserve network neutrality, preserve the Internet as we know it today. There is nothing wrong with it, and you won't hear a word from the Republicans or from the telephone companies making a case that there is anything wrong.
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