Objection to Reoceeding to the Telecommunications Bill

OBJECTION TO PROCEEDING TO THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS BILL -- (Senate - June 28, 2006)

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the major telecommunications legislation reported today by the Senate Commerce Committee is badly flawed. The bill makes a number of major changes in the country's telecommunications law, but there is one provision that is nothing more than a license to discriminate. Without a clear policy preserving the neutrality of the Internet and without tough sanctions against those who would discriminate, the Internet will be forever changed for the worse.

This one provision threatens to divide the Internet into technology haves and have-nots. This one provision concentrates even more power in the hands of the special interests that own the pipelines to the Internet. This one provision codifies discrimination on the Internet by a handful of large telecommunications and cable providers. This one provision will allow large, special interests to saddle consumers and small businesses alike with new and discriminatory fees over and above what they already pay for Internet access. This one small provision is akin to hurling a giant wrecking ball at the Internet.

The inclusion of this provision compels me to state that I will object to a unanimous consent request to the Senate proceeding with this legislation until a provision that provides true Internet neutrality is included.

This bill means the American people will no longer be able to use the Internet free from discrimination. Sure, the time it takes you to access the Web might be slower with dial-up, or you might zoom around the Web at warp speed, but you get to choose the speed. Today, whatever speed you chose doesn't make any difference in which sites you can visit. You still get access to any site you want. This is the beauty and the genius of the Internet. The Net is neutral.

The days of unfettered, unlimited, and free access to any site on the World Wide Web, what I call Net neutrality, are being threatened. Those who own the pipes, the giant cable and phone companies, want to discriminate in which sites you can access. If they get their way, not only will you have to pay more for faster speeds, you will have to pay more for something you get for free today: unfettered access to every site on the World Wide Web. To me, that is discrimination, pure and simple.

The Internet has thrived precisely because it is neutral. It has thrived because consumers, and not some giant cable or phone company, get to choose what they want to see and how quickly they get to see it. I am not going to allow a bill to go forward that is going to end surfing the Web free of discrimination.

The large interests have made it clear that if this bill moves forward, they will begin to discriminate. A Verizon Communications executive has called for an ``end to Google's `free lunch.' '' A Bell South executive has said that he wants the Internet to be turned into a ``pay-for-performance marketplace.'' What they and other cable and phone company executives are proposing is that instead of providing equal access for everyone to the same content at the same price, they will set up sweetheart arrangements to play favorites. Without net neutrality protections, this bill is bad news for consumers and anyone who today enjoys unlimited access to all of the Net's applications, service and content.

There is no doubt in my mind that American consumers and small business will be the losers in this fight if this bill is allowed to move forward. Right now, a computer science major at the University of Oregon is working on the next big thing for the Internet. But she will never get the chance to get the next big thing out there if she cannot pay the big fees that will be charged tomorrow for the same Internet access she gets for free today.

Right now in Pendleton, OR, there is a small family wheat farm where dad is monitoring the fertilizer on their crop via a new Web service program that his son bought. If the network operators have their way, this Web service will get so expensive that it will be out of reach for this family farmer.

As a Senator who has devoted himself to keeping the Internet free from discrimination, from discriminatory taxes and regulations to assuring offline protections apply to online consumer activities as well, I cannot stand by and allow the bill to proceed with this provision. The inclusion of this provision compels me to inform my colleagues that I will object to any unanimous consent request for the Senate to move to consider S. 2686, the Communications Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act.

There are other provisions in this legislation, such as the one relating to my proposal for the creation of kids television tiers, that are problematic, but none of them rises to the same level of concern as the one relating to network neutrality. Therefore, I will object to any further action on this telecommunications bill until it includes a strong net neutrality provision that will truly benefit consumers and small business.

Mr. President, Senator Grassley and I have spent over a decade fighting to ensure that when a Senator puts a hold on or blocks a major piece of legislation that there is accountability. We have required, under our proposal, that holds are publicly announced. Because I feel so strongly about this way of approaching holds, I have come to the floor tonight to announce that I intend to object to any unanimous consent request for the United States Senate to move to consider S. 2686, the telecommunications reform legislation that came from the Senate Commerce Committee a bit ago.

The reason I have come to the floor to make this announcement is that I believe this legislation is a license to discriminate on the Internet. Right now, we all know that when you use your browser, you get to go where you want, when you want, how you want. The Internet's special quality is that all content is treated equally. It is my fear that, as a result of this legislation without a clear policy preserving the neutrality of the Internet, and without tough sanctions against those who would discriminate, the Internet will be changed forever against the public interest.

In the beginning of these remarks--and it is my intent to be brief--I compliment Senator Stevens, Chairman of the Commerce Committee, and Ranking Member Inouye, with respect to the procedure for how this legislation was considered.

Late last winter I was allowed to come to the Senate Commerce Committee as a former member of the committee and make a presentation with respect to why I thought an Internet free of discrimination was so important. I introduced the first legislation, the Internet Nondiscrimination Act, back in March. Since then I have worked closely with colleagues, particularly Senator Snowe and Senator Dorgan, who have done such a great job championing an Internet free of discrimination. We have all worked for many months in trying to preserve a free and open Internet.

Unfortunately, despite the valiant work of those two Senators, Senators Snowe and Dorgan, and with the help of others, particularly Senator Cantwell, who spoke eloquently about why a free-from-discrimination Internet is so important, they were not successful. So now there is the prospect of major changes in the way the Internet works, changes that will affect millions of businesses and millions of consumers. At a minimum, I believe these changes are so important and mean so much to our country, it ought to be possible for the Senate to slow this down and take the time to consider what the implications are of a badly flawed piece of legislation with respect to its treatment of the Internet.

The failure to include what is called ``Net neutrality'' legislation is failure to keep the principle of keeping the Net free from discrimination. In my view, we run the prospect of dividing the Internet into technology haves and have-nots. What will happen is even more power will be concentrated in the hands of special interests that own the pipelines to the Net. In effect, the legislation codifies discrimination on the Net by giving a green light to a handful of large telecommunications and cable providers to set up what could be a system that will allow for differential treatment.

It means, for example, one small business may get service that won't be as good as another's. That translates, in my view, if it is done by deliberate design on the basis of who can pay, into discrimination.

The failure to include the Net neutrality legislation that Senators Dorgan and Snowe and I and others have worked on for so long is going to allow the special interests to saddle the startup businesses, the consumers, and the innovators with a variety of new and discriminatory fees over and above what they already pay for Internet access.

In my view, what has happened today, failing to include provisions that keep the Net free of discrimination, is like throwing a huge wrecking ball at this extraordinary telecommunications innovation that we all enjoy, known as the Net. The failure to include this provision compels me to state this objection to going forward on this legislation because I believe the days of unfettered, unlimited access to any site on the World Wide Web is threatened by this bill as written. Those who own the pipes, the cable companies and the phone companies, will be able to play favorites with respect to the sites that Americans can access.

If they get their way, not only will Americans have to pay more for faster speeds, they will have to pay more for how they use the Internet once they choose what speed to access it by, something they get for free today after they pay their basic access charge. In my view, the Internet has been such a great success precisely because it was free of discrimination. It thrives because the marketplace, consumers, small businesses, and others were able to choose what they wanted to see and how quickly they wanted to see it. So I am not going to let a bill like this go forward because it will end surfing the Web free of discrimination.

The large interests that have backed the legislation have written and have already made clear what their designs are. This is not some kind of atomic secret, Mr. President. There have been lengthy articles in the Wall Street Journal, for example, about pay-to-play. It outlined in great detail all of the ways in which the companies could play favorites, could give a break to a business who had a bit more money, and send somebody else who didn't have the funds off to the second tier. Instead of providing equal access for everyone to the same content at the same price, what we would have are sweetheart arrangements where certain parties would win and other parties would lose. This, in my view, is bad news for consumers and anyone who enjoys unlimited access to all of the Net's applications, services, and content.

Right now, there is a computer science major at the University of Oregon in my home State who is working on the next big thing for the Internet and has great dreams. I am sure that at universities and in garages in Oklahoma, where the Presiding Officer is from, there are constituents who are also working on the next big thing. My concern is that those dreamers in Oklahoma and Oregon, and the innovators and the people with the cutting edge ideas, would not get the chance to get the next big idea out because they would not be able to pay the big fees that Internet providers will charge tomorrow for them to get priority access to consumers or get stuck in the slow lane. Of course, they are going to be up against people, as they fight to show the worth of their idea, who can pay those big fees and have an advantage over them in the marketplace.

What is especially troubling to me, Mr. President, is it seems that if you have an innovative startup in Oregon or Oklahoma or elsewhere in our country, you are going to be up against these new barriers. But guess what? Our competitors around the world don't have the same kind of barriers with. So what I am concerned about is that if you have a good idea in our country, a promising kind of startup, and you run up against all of these hurdles--these new discriminatory hurdles placed on the Internet--you are going to say, what the heck, I cannot compete in that kind of situation, so I will just take the business overseas.

What I want to do--and I know the Senator from Oklahoma wants to do it--is create high-skill, high-wage jobs in our country. We ought to keep the incentives here rather than making it attractive to take promising ideas overseas. I have been involved in a lot of technology issues, and the principle that I have always thought was most important was ensuring that there is no discrimination.

Today, I was very pleased that the Senate Finance Committee accepted my amendment to make permanent the ban on discriminatory and multiple taxes on electronic commerce. We have been at this since 1996. We passed it three times in the Senate, always by large majorities, and I said let's get at it now and make it permanent so that we give predictability and certainty in the marketplace. I was very pleased that, with the support of Grassley and Baucus, I was able to win passage of that legislation that involved taxes, ensuring that there was no discrimination in the tax and the electronic commerce areas. I was pleased that it passed.

Unfortunately, what was done today in the Commerce Committee by giving a green light to discriminators undoes a lot of what the Senate has done over the last few years in terms of ensuring nondiscrimination in electronic commerce.

We made sensible decisions in the tax arena because we barred discrimination as it related to taxing electronic commerce. Now the Senate Commerce Committee comes along and says we are going to pass on this Net neutrality issue; we are not going to include it, so now there can be other forms of discrimination on the Net. That makes no sense to me, and it seems particularly ironic today, of all days, as the Senate has been trying to prevent discrimination in the taxation area of electronic commerce, to essentially undo that important policy by allowing unprecedented discrimination in the marketplace.

There is another area I think is worth noting as I object to the consideration of S. 2686. We have heard from a number of those opposed to Net neutrality legislation that there has been no problem, that there are no instances of discrimination. No. 1, that is factually incorrect because there is already a major Federal Communications Commission case, Madison River case, and No. 2, the big telecoms and cable companies have already announced their plans to discriminate. I have described the plans in the Wall Street Journal which are not any kind of hidden effort to sneak something by people. The Wall Street Journal describes the plans for differential treatment.

I note, as we consider this issue, the consequences of discrimination. If those who want to discriminate--and my sense is, by their own admissions, they are going to start very quickly--are able to set in place the discriminatory routers and other equipment that would allow them to treat those small businesses and individuals differently, once those routers and other discriminatory systems are in place, it is going to be very difficult to undo them. They will be embedded in that system of pipes and infrastructure which makes it possible for Americans to enjoy the Net. I am not willing to sit by and let all of those discriminatory routers and other kinds of complicated systems that make up the pipes for the Net go into effect without an opportunity for the Senate to really consider the consequences.

We are talking with respect to this legislation and its absence of strong Net neutrality language, about changing policy that has been the bedrock of the telecommunications field for many years--non-discrimination.

This legislation contains a variety of major changes in the country's telecommunications law. I happen to support many of them. But I will tell the Senate tonight that a communications bill that does not embed, and do it clearly, that the Internet will be free of discrimination is legislation that I believe is badly flawed.

This is a complicated subject. There are differing views on Net neutrality and I am the first to admit it. But I think all sides would agree that this is a complicated issue. It ought to be one the Senate takes the time to really think through. And I will make it clear to the Senate that I, for one, feel so strongly about ensuring telecommunications policy continues to be based on principles that bar discrimination that I am taking this action tonight for purposes of carrying out that objective.

Let me state again, it is my intent to object to any further action on this legislation, S. 2686, until it includes a strong Net neutrality provision that will ensure there is a vibrant, healthy Internet for decades to come.

My colleagues, Senator Snowe and Senator Dorgan, did a superb job this afternoon in making the case for our point of view. I am very proud to have been able to work with them. The legislation they introduced is very similar to mine. Unfortunately, the Snowe-Dorgan legislation went down on a tie vote in the Commerce Committee today. However, this discussion needs to continue. I hope the Senate will insist that the way the Internet works today, and particularly its egalitarian nature where everybody uses their browser and gets to where they want, when they want, how they want, is continued for generations to come.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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