Markey Said To Back Network Neutrality Study
House Democrat Expected To Propose FCC Study Issues Around Discriminatory Bandwidth Practices
By Ted Hearn -- Multichannel News, 2/11/2008 9:43:00 AM
Rep. Edward Markey, (D.-Mass.), a senior House Democrat, is expected to introduce legislation as soon as Tuesday that would order the Federal Communications Commission to study network neutrality issues and report back to Congress in one year or less, according to lobbyists and a House aide tracking the effort.
Markey’s bill is expected to have bipartisan support, including Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), who is retiring at the end of the year after playing an active role in media and telecommunications policymaking.
A Markey aide couldn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comments. But two telecom lobbyists and a House aide indicated that Markey was poised to introduce his bill soon.
It’s unclear why Markey would need legislation. In 2004, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the FCC to prepare a report on the a la carte sale of cable programming. The FCC delivered the report in November 2004, but FCC chairman Kevin Martin secretly revised it the next year to show a la carte could benefit consumers in some ways.
It’s also unclear why Markey waited until the second year of the current Congress to advance legislation. If his bill becomes law in a few months, there’s a chance that a Republican-controlled FCC would begin the report but after the November elections, a Democratic-controlled FCC would finish it.
Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, failed to pass a net neutrality amendment on the House floor in 2006, just months before Democrats regained power in the House.
Markey’s amendment would have banned discriminatory conduct by cable, phone and other broadband-access providers against companies such as Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and eBay Inc.
It also would have prohibited network owners from blocking of unaffiliated Web-based services and from demanding fees in exchange for priority treatment of Internet-based services.
The debate today is less about outright blocking with anticompetitive intent than about so-called network management techniques and the extent to which network owners may take proactive steps to ensure that a few bandwidth hogs don’t spoil Web surfing for the vast majority of customers.
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