IP Democracy: Markey Attacks, Barton Defends, Telecom Legislation

The House Commerce Committee held a hearing today on draft telecom reform legislation released earlier this week, the so-called Barton bill named after Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX). As expected with this controversial bill, sparks flew, with most of the friction generated by the conflict between majority and minority members of the committee. The biggest bone of contention: the bill lacks any enforceable requirements regarding network neutrality.

Ed Markey (D-MA), Ranking Minority Member of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, was strident in his objections to the draft bill, reflecting a bi-partisan crack in the committee that emerged earlier this month. Markey’s main complaint is the lack of clear-cut net neutrality requirements in the bill. (The draft legislation bucks net neutrality disputes to the FCC for adjudication under “principles” adopted last year.)

Markey said that allowing broadband providers to create a two-tiered Internet is nothing more than an electronic commerce broadband bottleneck tax:

I understand that there are those who argue that we should rely on mere network neutrality ‘principles,’ or an imprecisely-worded FCC policy statement, rather than legally enforceable rules. Others will advise us to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach. Yet, we know from public statements from several industry executives that the owners of the broadband wires into our homes would like to start charging fees to Internet content providers. In other words, they want to artificially constrain the supply of Internet-based content and services to high-bandwidth consumers. This represents nothing more than the imposition of a broadband bottleneck tax on electronic commerce. Such a bottleneck tax for accessing consumers will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on investment and innovation.

Full committee Ranking Minority Member John Dingell (D-MI) was less passionate but no less opposed to the bill. “This bill violates the fundamental principle of legislation: first, do no harm,” Dingell said.

Rick Boucher (D-VA) called the bill a “thin measure” when it comes to network neutrality and said “I’m deeply concerned that this two-lane plan will have a dramatic effect on innovation.” Boucher dismissed broadband providers’ arguments that net neutrality regulations are premature because no problems have occurred yet in the marketplace.

“We don’t have the luxury of simply sitting back and seeing how things work out,” he said. “When businesses start to generate revenues from a business model, it is exceedingly difficult to later outlaw that business model.”

Chairman Barton showed little patience for these attacks and asked the industry representatives on the first panel for their definitions of what net neutrality is (see below). After each of the panelists offered a different construction, Barton said with clear irritation “We’re tied up in this [net neutrality] before we even have a universally recognized definition of what it is.”

Each of the panelists did, in fact, have a different take on network neutrality, although Kyle McSlarrow, CEO of NCTA and Walter McCormick, head of US Telecom, bolstered Barton by professing confusion about the definition. However, Jeffrey Citron, founder of VoIP provider Vonage said “the hallmark of net neutrality is consumer protection.” It is, he added, “the right to bring any device to the network, access any content on the network.”

Amazon.com VP Paul Misener defined network neutrality as “preventing the extension of market power over the network to market power over the content.” Corning VP and TIA President Tim Regan offered this definition:

Consumers ought to get access to the bandwidth they buy, they ought to gain access to the applications they run, they ought to be able to attach devices they want, and they ought to be able to go anywhere they want to go on the Internet.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 30, 2006 4:18 PM to IP Democracy