NCTA, Verizon Clash on Broadband Policy
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 12/20/2001 6:18:00 AM
The cable industry and a giant phone company are clashing on whether the Bush administration should endorse a deregulatory model for all broadband providers.
The conflict emerged Wednesday in comments filed with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce Department division that is studying broadband deployment in the United States on behalf of the White House.
At least one phone company -- Verizon Communications, the nation's largest local telco, with 63 million access lines -- is pushing for a uniform national policy under which all broadband services would be deregulated, allowing the market to drive investment decisions.
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association warned against a 'one-size-fits-all' policy that applies the same broadband rules to cable operators, phone companies and satellite carriers.
Without explicitly calling for continued common-carrier regulation of broadband services offered by phone companies, the NCTA asserted that the NTIA had to be mindful that different industries shoulder different forms of regulation due to their different histories, even when they offer the same services.
'Cable and DBS [direct-broadcast satellite] are a good example,' the NCTA said, noting that unlike cable operators, DBS carriers do not need local franchises or pay franchise fees.
Regarding the phone companies, the NCTA said they are regulated differently depending on whether they are incumbents or new entrants and depending on whether they are Baby Bells or small incumbent phone carriers.
The NCTA suggested -- but didn't actually state -- that establishing regulatory parity between cable and incumbent phone carriers in the broadband arena would be misguided because the phone companies deployed high-speed facilities 'under a regulatory regime that shielded them from competition and funded their investments with captive ratepayer charges.'
The association added that cable operators did not enjoy those same protections.
Verizon said it favored a regulatory scheme that regulated based on the services offered, rather than on the type of company offering the services.
'This is the surest method of preventing narrowband-voice rules from being applied inappropriately to the broadband-data world,' the telco added.
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