Dingell, Markey to Take Telecom Command
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 11/8/2006 4:13:00 PM MT
Democrat Reps. John Dingell (Mich.) and Ed Markey (Mass.) -- advocates of Internet-nondiscrimination policies opposed by cable and phone companies -- are expected to take command of telecommunications policy when their party reclaims power in the House in January.
Dingell and Markey -- policy veterans with a combined House tenure of 82 years -- are poised to take control after House Republicans were trounced at the polls Tuesday night, restoring Democrats to power for the first time since 1994. Democrats, picking up 32 seats, are projected to hold a 234-201 majority in the 110th Congress.
If House Democrats adhere to seniority, Dingell will become chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel with jurisdiction over cable operators, broadcasters, and phone companies. Markey will take the helm of the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, the likely venue of hearings examining policy at the Federal Communications Commission under GOP chairman Kevin Martin.
“It’s up to the [House Democratic] leadership and the [Democratic] Caucus, but that is the likely outcome,” Washington, D.C.-based telecommunications lawyer Gerry Waldron, a former Markey aide, said Wednesday.
Markey in June lost a House floor vote on his amendment, supported by Dingell, which would have imposed net-neutrality regulations on cable and phone broadband-access providers. New telecommunications legislation by Dingell and Markey in 2007 would likely include net-neutrality mandates from the outset.
Over the years, Dingell and Markey have been friendlier to broadcasters than cable. Both were instrumental in passing the rate-reregulatory 1992 Cable Act, the only law enacted over the veto of President George H.W. Bush. And both are likely to support multicast must-carry, especially if fused to new public-interest obligations for digital-TV broadcasters.
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