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Two U.S. Senators Back Municipalities Offering Broadband ServiceThe “Community Broadband Act of 2005” would prevent states from enacting laws that prohibit cities and towns from offering broadband services. By TED GLANZER TMCnet Communications and Broadband Columnist Two U.S. senators on Thursday introduced a bipartisan piece of legislation that would prohibit states from passing laws preventing municipalities from offering low-cost broadband services. The proposed amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, backed by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), is in direct contravention to a bill introduced before the House of Representatives in May by Republican Rep. Pete Sessions. The McCain-Lautenberg bill, dubbed the “Community Broadband Act of 2005,” also includes an anti-discriminatory provision that would prevent municipalities from enacting ordinances favoring their public broadband services over private broadband offerings. In support of his bill, Sessions said that municipal broadband service would limit competition and would waste the limited resources available to cities and towns. The comments delivered on the Senate floor by McCain and Lautenberg were at odds with Sessions’ claims. “This legislation will promote economic development, enhance public safety, increase educational opportunities, and improve the lives of citizens in areas across the country in areas that do not have access to broadband or live in a location where the cost for broadband is simply not affordable,” Lautenberg said. Also, McCain and Lautenberg said that their bill was necessary to meet President George W. Bush’s goal to provide broadband access to every citizen in America by 2007. “If we are going to meet President Bush’s goals, we must not enact barriers to broadband development and access,” McCain said. McCain said that the Community Broadband Act would help meet President Bush’s goal and keep the U.S. more competitive with other countries by offering its citizens low-cost broadband services. Depending on what survey you read, the U.S. is ranked somewhere between 12th and 16th in the number of people who have access to broadband networks. “Many of the countries outpacing the United States in the deployment of high-speed Internet services, including Canada, Japan, and South Korea have successfully combined municipal systems with privately deployed networks to wire their countries,” McCain said. He added: “As a country, we cannot afford to cut off any successful strategy if we want to remain internationally competitive.” Certainly the Community Broadband Act isn’t winning too many fans at telecoms such as SBC Communications and Verizon Communications. Indeed, SBC has gone so far as to back the Sessions bill and the argument that municipalities should not allocate their budgets to setting up broadband networks. This certainly is a major development, which shows that there is going to be a spirited debate on Capitol Hill in the upcoming months regarding the rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. ----- Ted Glanzer is assistant editor for TMCnet. For more articles by Ted Glanzer, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/columnists/columnist.aspx?id=100033&nm=Ted%20Gl anzer |