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New bill to free Bells from regulations
By Bloomberg
News
WASHINGTON--Senate Commerce Committee chairman John
McCain introduced legislation aimed at keeping the Internet regulation-free to
encourage companies to build high-speed Internet networks in all parts of the
United States.
"Americans with access to high-speed Internet
service will get the best of what the Internet has to offer," including
on- line commerce and tele-medicine, said McCain
(R-Arizona). "But what it also means is that Americans who don't have
access to high-speed Internet service won't enjoy these same advantages."
The regional phone companies--Bell Atlantic, BellSouth,
SBC Communications, US West, and Ameritech--are now shackled by regulations
that deter them from building these new high-speed connections in all parts of
the country and making them available to people of all income levels, McCain
said.
McCain wants to free the Bells from regulations that
require them to sell their high-speed data service to competitors at wholesale
discounts, as they are required to do for voice telephone calls.
The regulations were supposed to limit the companies'
power in the local phone business, "but they are mistakenly being applied
to the entirely different advanced-data market," McCain said. As a result,
the companies' costs are increased, limiting their ability to offer services in
many areas.
"It's been our position all along that the market
for high- speed data has no dominant player and therefore should be unregulated,"
said SBC spokesman David Schlosser.
"This legislation will make the Internet more
accessible and less expensive by stripping away counterproductive federal
regulations," US West chairman Sol Trujillo said in a statement.
As chairman of the Commerce Committee, which oversees
the phone industry, McCain will be in a position to push the legislation. House
telecommunications subcommittee chairman Billy Tauzin (R-Louisiana), plans to
introduce a similar measure within weeks, said spokesman Ken Johnson.
New local phone competitors and large long-distance
companies such as AT&T and MCI WorldCom are sure to oppose the proposal.
Cable TV companies like AT&T and Time Warner, rushing to build their own
high-speed networks, also oppose lifting restrictions on phone companies.