roundtable: Telecom Post #4
roundtable: Telecom Post #4
Telecom Post #4
CWHITCOM@bentley.edu
Thu, 08 Jun 1995 07:30:41 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Thu, 08 Jun 1995 07:30:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: CWHITCOM@bentley.edu
Subject: Telecom Post #4
To: roundtable@cni.org
Message-Id: <01HRGEJLE5760028F8@bentley.edu>
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Free Speech Media, LLC
June 6, 1995
Number 4
6 pages
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Compiled, written, and edited by Coralee Whitcomb
Please address all questions and comments to cwhitcom@bentley.edu
=====================================================
The following report is posted to various discussion lists
and is also available from the CPSR listserv. To subscribe,
send to LISTSERV@CPSR.ORG with the message
SUBSCRIBE TELECOM-POST YOUR NAME.
The Telecom Post will be published weekly while the U.S. Congress
works on the first comprehensive rewrite of legislation regarding
telecommunications since the Communication Act of 1934.
S. 652 comes to the floor
S. 652 - what is good
S. 652 - what is bad
The Feinstein Anti-Terroism amendment
Regulatory Reform
Whither FCC
Recisssions
S. 652 - THIS WEEK
The time for the final showdown has come in the Senate. S. 652,
the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995,
comes to the floor on June 6 with the intention of passage by
the end of the week. Any action to either amend or defeat this
bill must be taken NOW. This is a bad bill. In the words of
Jeff Chester from the Center for Media Education, it will "set
the stage for at least a generation". The best we can hope for,
at the end of the week, is a less bad bill. 35 votes is the
magic number for the Senate. Given an opposition of that size,
a veto can be supported. There are three possible improved
outcomes for this bill. 1) The bill is improved before it
passes the Senate. 2) The bill is defeated in the Senate. 3)
The bill is passed and later vetoed by the Presdent. Since #2
is the least likely outcome, and this president does not
typically favor the veto option, it would appear that making
every effort to improve this bill is the best bet for now -
though this sow's ear will never make a silk purse. Brad
Stillman of the Consumer Federation of America points out that
the bill has been clevely written to highlight grand sounding
headings in each section while containing multiple pages of
exceptions for each heading. Given the bill's length, it is
unlikely it will get a thorough read from every Senator.
Right now there is fragile bi-partisan support for the bill.
Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC) is on board with Sen.Larry Pressler
(R-SD) and Sen. Robert Dole (R-KA). Senators Bob Packwood
(R-OR) and John McCain (R-AZ) oppose the bill on the ground that
it does not go far enough to de-regulate the industry. The
Administration is eager to pass a bill this year but may be
considering a veto due to the gutting of the 1992 Cable Act.
S.652 would essentially repeal the cable rate regulation
provisions.
S 652 - WHAT IS GOOD
>From the public interest perspective, there is one good feature
of this bill - the "Snow-Rockefeller" amendment insuring
incremental cost-based rates for education, libraries, and
health care providers - but even that is contested.
"Affordable" as opposed to the current "cost-based" language has
been suggested. Sen. Dole (R-KA) is circulating an alternative
to the Snowe-Rockefeller amendment that would provide a fund
developed from monies returned from 75 MHz of spectrum sales to
support educational access to the National Information
Infrastructure (NII). While on its face this looks like a
generous effort, the spectrum specified is on the low end of
desireability and unlikely to be freed for auction -ultimately
promising a very small fund. Sen. Lott is proposing that a
seperate fund be developed that would be used for
telecommunications equipment, services and training. It would
be nice if this were to supplement Snowe-Rockerfeller but it is
meant to serve as a substitute.
Universal service language is strong in the bill. Language
promoted by the Alliance for Public Technology that describes
the universal service goal that will "promote and encourage
advanced telecommunications networks, capable of enabling users
to originate and receive affordable, high-quality voice, data,
image, graphic and video telecommunicaitons services" is
included. It also calls for appropriate guarantees for
"functional requirements," "performance standards, " and
"interconnection standards". This language is at risk in the
House counterpart as there are moves to restrict universal
service goals to POTS. A petition to support this language is
included in the followup post, Telecom Post Action Items.
S 652 - WHAT IS BAD
Everything else is bad - but especially the rebirth of the
spirit of the Exon amendment. A new amendment would hold system
operators liable should they knowingly transmit "lewd,
lascivious..." content to children under 18 carrying a 5 year
prison term. Likewise, networks that knowingly transmit such
material and knowingly permit access to children under 18 can be
fined $10K and sentenced to 2 years in prison. Senator Lott has
proposed an amendment that would return the Exon amendment to
its original state of holding networks liable for offensive
material.
Sen. Leahy has authored a substitute amendment to the Exon
amendment that asks for a study on technological methods of
filtering offensive online material. This amendment is a far
better approach to the problem and an electronic petition
supporting it has grown to 25K signatures in two weeks.
Instructions for signing that petition are in the followup post,
Telecom Post Action Items.
Traditionally the electromagnetic spectrum has been considered a
publically-owned resource, administered by the government. To
that end, the interests of the non-commercial sector have always
been considered with channel set-asides, must-carry provisions,
and leased access provisions. This special treatment was seen
to be in public interest as it intended to insured a diveristy
of voices and public access. Various provisions of S.652, when
combined, will all but eliminate the public, noncommercial voice
on the public's airwaves.
Spectrum Flexiblity
With the coming of HDTV, the FCC reserved some of the public
spectrum for broadcasters in order to make the switch from
analog to digital broadcasting. Once completed (estimated to
take about 15 years), the original spectrum would be returned to
the government. As time passed, HDTV did not materialize as a
viable market strategy, but that extra spectrum remained in the
hands of the broadcasters. Section 207(a)(1) of S652 would allow
a broadcaster to keep the orginal spectrum and to use the
additional spectrum with some minor public interest obligations
in any way they choose. A scenario from the Media Access
Project report "The Great Spectrum Giveaway of 1995: Issues and
Options" -
For example, officials at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox
television network have proposed providing an all news channel
on the extra spectrum. Under the broadcasters' plan, this
station could promote candidtaes for public offic without having
any corresponding duty to give access or the lowest rate to
opposing chandidates. Another possiblity would be a continuous
infomercial channel, featuring products intended primarily for
children. The scheme contemplated by the broadcasters would
have no limits on commercialization, product length commercials
or 'host selling'.
Repeal of cross-ownership restrictions:
The main objective and the name of S652 is to promote
competition throughout the , telecommunications arena. In the
future we will, ideally, be served by mulitple companies
offering similar information and communication services. This
competition should insure lower rates and better customer
service. Though the current law prohibits telephone companies from
owning cable companies within their service area, S.652
will lift that prohibition. It stands to reason that this kind
of merger will inevitably take place and, rather than increased
competition, we will be left with a single wire to the home.
Inevitably, some areas would return to even greater levels of
monopoly service than we now have through the RBOCS. Special
considerations need to be made for rural areas where competitive
services may not be practical, however, it is obvious to many, from
the Admninistration to Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), that
lifting this restriction would discourage competition.
Broadcast Ownership
S.652 would increase the size of the national audience that one
broadcast owner can reach from 25% to 35%. It also lifts the
cable-broadcast cross-ownership ban. The lifting of this
restriction coupled with the potential increase in spectrum
available through the new compression techniques and "spectrum
flexibility" will likely concentrate broadcast ownership into
the hands of a few. Liscence renewel terms are extended form 5
to 10 in television and 7 to 10 years in radio, limiting
oversight of the FCC to insure the publc interest.
Common Carriage
Common carriage is found in the telephone system and the postal
service. These services are required to serve all "content
providers" able to bear the cost. Again, special consideration
is shown to the public voice through special rates. No one is
prevented from the use of the "conduit", content is not
monitored or censored, and transmission capacity is expected to
grow as called for by demand. In each case, the service is a
monopoly and in each case the government imposes strong
regulation in order to maintain fair prices and universal access
to the entire population. Common carriage regulation builds a
wall between "content" and "conduit" control in an effort to
prevent "gatekeeper" activities - the conduit owner from
limiting the use of the transmission medium.
Video Dialtone - PEG access protection
The Association For Community Media has been extremely active in
efforts to protect the public access TV arrangements built into
local cable franchises. It is feared that when telcos are able
to provide video services (Video Dialtone), they will not be
required to divert some portion of their resources to providing
the public a broadcast voice. Telcos use the argument that they
are common carriers and therefore, not operating in the
same"gatekeeper" mode that cable companies do. Bell Atlantic is
the first RBOC to seriously pursue video dialtone services.
They offered to voluntarily provide PEG-like access to the
service area (known as "will-carry") even without the insistance
by the FCC or Congress. For now it looks like video dialtone is
to be put on the back burner since other technologies appear to
produce the same service better and faster, but nevertheless,
the "will-carry" promises seem to have been destined to be
broken. Bell Atlantic now denies it ever made such offers. Signs
of things to come.
Disabled Provisions
There is no language in the bill concerning text captioning.
This not only affects the hearing impaired - others, such as new
readers and the new English speakers are helped with the use of
captioning. Last year's bill dealt adequately with disabled
issues but this bill is silent.
Help may be on the way from Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Paul
Wellstone (D-MN), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Russ Feingold
(D-WI) in the form of a tacked on amendment on lobbying reform.
Though seemingly unrelated, the Senate allows this kind of thing
to happen. Lobbying reform is sure to start a tempest, possibly
hot enough to defeat the whole bill. On the other hand, the
Administration might be so eager to enact lobbying reform, it
would override its concerns over cable rate de-regulation.
ANTI-TERRORISM DEBACLE
The People For the American Way Action Fund have raised concern
over the
Senator Feinstein sponsored amendment to the United States Code,
section 841 of title 18, adding "(1) It shall be unlawful for
any person to teach or demonstrate the making of explosive
materials, or to disseminate by any means information pertaining
to, in whole or in part, the manufacture of explosive materials,
if the person intends, knows, or reasonably should know that
such explosive materials or information is likely to be used
for, or furtherance of, a federal offense or other criminal
purpose affecting interstate commerce." The language was
altered to distribute by any means if the defendent "intends or
knows" that it will be used in a crime. This bill has PASSED
the Senate.
REGULATORY REFORM
OMB Watch reports that an all out effort is underway to
effectively "Defund the Left". Their June 7 newsletter does a
thorough job of describing this fairly complex initiative. OMB
Watch can be contacted at 202-234-8494. A traditional role of
nonprofit advocacy has been to share insights with policymakers
as to the service needs of the public. This role would be
seriously limited with moves in both the Senate and House to
broaden the definintion of lobbying and to deny federal funds to
any nonprofit organizations that then fall under that
definintion. "Lobbying" activities would be described as
"conducting seminars, research to educate Congress or the
general public about public policy issues, producing books and
pamphlets, or a combination." A bill containing that language
has arrived in the Senate tucked into the USA Tax Act, S.722,
sponsored by by Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Sam Nunn (D-GA). Other
bills are on their way to the House.
Other efforts at undermining the government's abililty to serve
in the public interest is an initiative to cripple the ability
of regulation to effectively serve as a public safeguard. Bills
have passed the House that require "agencies to perform
extensive risk-assessment and cost benefit analyses on new
proposed regulations;" (OMB Watcher, June 7, 1995). S343 and
S291, sponsored by Senators Dole (R-KS) and Roth (R-DE)
respectively will reach the Senate floor soon. Other attacks
come in the form of regualtory moratorium on all agency
activites involved in developing or implementing new regulations
- HR 450 and S219 would stop all agency actions retroactive to
Nov. 20, 1994 and until Dec. 31, 1995. The House FY96 Budget
Resolution includes language that "defunds" regulations. Over
60 federal mandates and regulations would be barred from
appropriated mones for enforcement. Included in this list is
the Clean Air Act, the OSHA ergonomics standard, the Motor Voter
Act, and the Community Reinvestment Act. Sunset provisions for
regulations are being introduced that would require periodic
risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis of every regulation or
suffer termination.
There will be more to come on these efforts. Bills pursuing
these objectives are scheduled to appear over the summer. The
Citizens for Sensible Safeguards have begun a campaign against
these moves. For more information contact Beth Kirsch at OMB
Watch at 202-234-8494 or email at regs@rtk.net.
FCC AT RISK
The Progress and Freedom Foundation has issued a report advising
that the Federal Communication Commission be eliminated in 3
years. It would be replaced by a much smaller Office of
Communications in the Executive branch. The Justice Department
would take on all anti-trust matters that arose. The report has
been criticized by the Media Access Project as 1) giving a
superficial rendering of the FCC's failures 2) attempting to
push universal service determination onto the states and
limiting its definition to POTS (plain old telephone service) 3)
gives broadcast spectrum away to anyone who claims it, leaving
disputes up to the courts to settle. Gigi Sohn of the Media
Access Project claims that this report has very little chance of
becoming reality. It is serving the purpose of pushing the
discussion further into the free market model and away from
regulation.
For a copy of the FCC Replacement Plan, write me at
cwhitcom@bentley.edu.
RECISSIONS
TIAAP
The TIIAP money allotted by this year's budget to be awarded to
community telecommunication projects by the NTIA (National
Telcommunication Information Agency) has been officially cut by
$15M to $49M. An additional cut of $4M is pending, however,
there looms a threat of a veto which would essentially leave the
amount at $49M. The decisions on the grants will be announced
in October. Next year's program is still in doubt as the
Department of Commerce, itself, may have disappeared. Fax
numbers for the pertinant senators will follow in the Telecom
Post Action Items post.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting took some hits in the
end but they were not as spectacular as were feared. The budget
for 1996 will suffer a < 5% cut in federal dollars and 1997 will
suffer < 10% cut. However, the 1998 budget could very well
include 0 federal dollars. CPB is currently restructuring in
preparation for 1998.
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