MESSAGE
| DATE | 2006-06-23 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Legistlative front
|
ntelligent Infrastructure The Incredible Hulk Versus Google Jessica
Holzer 06.22.06, 6:00 AM ET
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens pic
By This Author
Jessica Holzer
• Martin's FCC Takes Step To Change Ownership Rules • Supreme Court
Muddies The Waters • Policy Wonks Versus Bernanke More Headlines
Popular Slide Shows The World's Most Powerful Celebrities Coolest
Communication Devices Of The Future World's Most Dangerous Races World's
Sexiest Islands Best Adventure Cars
Related Quotes EBAY 29.93 - 0.08 GOOG 402.50 + 2.55 MSFT 22.72
- 0.16
Most Popular Stories The World's Most Powerful Celebrities Coolest
Communication Devices Of The Future World's Most Dangerous Races World's
Sexiest Islands Best Adventure Cars
Washington, D.C. -
Ted Stevens doesn't make a likely media mogul or telco titan. The
82-year-old senator from Alaska wears cowboy boots under his pin-stripe
suits, and he looks like he'd be more comfortable talking about oil
pipelines instead of iPods, voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone
calls or concepts like "net neutrality."
Yet Stevens, a Republican and a 37-year veteran of the Senate, has long
been a powerful force shaping telecom policy in Washington. And, as the
chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he is pushing a bill that
will have a huge impact on the telecommunications and media industries
for years to come. The legislation faces a key hurdle today with a vote
by the Commerce Committee.
The bill is nothing if not ambitious. It aims to shore up the massive fund
that pays for telephone service in rural areas, create a $500 million
slush fund to bring broadband access to underserved areas and speed the
entrance of telephone companies into the subscription TV business. But
wait, there's more: It would issue new rules for the conversion to digital
television, institute a "broadcast flag" to prevent digital broadcast
content from being redistributed online, and it even tackles child porn.
But don't make the mistake of telling Stevens he wants to overhaul
the nation's telecom laws. "It's not telecommunications anymore," he
snaps. "You must call it communications...We want them judged by what
they do, not by what they're called."
This isn't a semantic difference to Stevens, who seems determined to not
repeat the errors of the 1996 Telecom Act. The now-antiquated legislation
made scant reference to the Internet and handed down different rules
for technologies based on whether they were called "information" or
"communications" services. Stevens, who was involved in crafting that law,
now acknowledges its flaws.
"It didn't really work the way we thought it would," he said recently in
an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "Technology came at us so fast."
A desire to undo past mistakes partly explains why Stevens is pushing
sweeping legislation during an election year. But more important is his
perspective as a senator from a state where a surprising chunk of the
population still lacks an Internet hookup, and where telephone service
is subsidized by people living in more densely populated states--what
Stevens calls the "South 48."
"I think communications have become a right for all Americans," he
says. "There are people who live in isolated areas who cannot have access
to the modern types of communications unless there is an adjustment
provided by the industry."
Alaska is one of the chief beneficiaries of the Universal Services Fund,
which is financed mainly through long-distance phone taxes. But worried
about grumblings from telco users and telco companies, Stevens wants to
shift more of the burden onto other technologies, such as cable Internet
providers and wireless services, which currently don't put much into
the fund.
Yet there is a growing risk that this goal might elude him. His
legislation is facing an uphill fight in the Senate, where it is imperiled
by the rapidly diminishing floor time before lawmakers become distracted
by the midterm elections. And it has also been slowed by the ruckus over
network neutrality.
Under the banner "Save the Internet," a noisy coalition of mainly
Democratic groups and tech firms like eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news -
people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) is pressing for
language that would require cable and telephone companies to give equal
treatment to all Internet traffic flowing on their networks. The concept
is anathema to the telcos and cable companies, who argue that they ought
to be able to charge Internet companies for things like faster delivery
on their networks or service quality.
For Stevens, the net neutrality fight has morphed from an irritant to
a genuine obstacle. His friend and co-chair on the Commerce Committee,
Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has blasted the final draft of his bill as
far too weak on the issue. Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Byron Dorgan,
D-N.D., both members of the committee, have introduced legislation that
would bar network operators from charging for service quality and faster
delivery speeds.
Stevens once described himself as a "mean, miserable SOB" and is known
to don an "Incredible Hulk" tie when he is bruising for a fight. Last
fall, he shut down an attempt by fellow Republicans to de-fund his
state's infamous "bridge to nowhere"--a proposed piece of pork that
would connect two barely populated towns--by threatening to resign. "This
amendment will not pass. If it does, the bill will not pass. If it does,
I’ll be taken out of here on a stretcher," he declared on the Senate
floor. The bridge kept its funding.
Stevens is no less opposed to any language in his bill that would appease
the net neutrality crowd, arguing that such legislation would protect "
Google and Gates" rather than consumers. His bill merely instructs the
Federal Communications Commission to study the issue and institutes an
"Internet Consumers' Bill of Rights" that critics have disparaged as
worthless. It also pointedly forbids the agency from handing down new
regulations to enforce net neutrality.
All this bickering over the future of the Internet may not matter in
the end if Stevens does not pare down his bill to a reasonable size. The
word in telecom circles is that the bill is too cumbersome to pass. "He's
never to be underestimated, but the clock is not his friend," said Scott
Cleland, president of the Precursor Group, a telecom consultancy.
After decades in the Senate, Stevens no doubt has plenty of legislative
tricks up his sleeve. At the very least, he hopes that he can shame some
Democrats into voting for the bill based on the $1 billion it would dole
out to first responders, just as hurricane season has begun. "If they
want to kill this bill, they are going to prevent the first responders
from getting that money," he says.
But if all else fails, there's always the Incredible Hulk tie.
--
__________________________
Brooklyn Linux Solutions
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://fairuse.nylxs.com
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming
sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need
the ability to participate in our own society."
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
|
|
