WASHINGTON – You're excused if you don't know this, but broadband Internet access really does exist.
In fact, an estimated 5 to 6 million American households have speedy Net connections. Yet, if you're like most Americans plodding about the Internet these days, sipping bandwidth through 56 Kbps straws, you may wonder why you're not one of them.
Saying they're equally concerned, legislators embarked on a mission this month to remove the clog from the broadband pipe.
As chairman of the House Commerce Committee, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-Louisiana), has emerged as the kind of plumber-in-chief. Tauzin believes that portions of a five-year-old law barring local telephone companies from the long-distance data market are blocking Americans from receiving faster information flow to homes.
On Wednesday, after eight hours of often contentious debate, the committee voted 32-23 to send Tauzin's Internet Freedom and Broadband Deployment Act (PDF file) to the House floor.
Many others, however, argue the Bells are responsible for any backups. They are hoping to pour some Washington-strength Drano on them – in the form of higher fines for non-compliance with the network-opening parts of the 1996 Telecommunications Act – and possibly even antitrust prosecution.
In an unusual turn for what could be viewed as an obscure telecommunications issue, the battle over broadband has left the staid hearing rooms of Capitol Hill and is now a war of words over the airwaves.
The Bells and their detractors – including AT&T and a host of other Internet backbone providers – have shelled out millions of dollars on television ads that run almost constantly, with each side accusing the other of being the reason broadband hasn't reached the masses.
That's about the only thing on which they can agree, and they're right. Currently only around 5 percent of connected households access the Internet through faster-than-modem lines.
While part of the problem is access to broadband services – a February General Accounting Office survey found that only about 50 percent of Internet users even have access to broadband connections. The other factor is price. Broadband services tend to run $50 per month and up, as opposed to the typical $20 a month or less charged for dialup connections.
But whatever the reason, most users are stuck moving at a snail's pace on the Web, which leads to one important conclusion: There's a lot at stake in the current debate.
Aside from the fates of the companies involved in providing broadband, many see high-speed Internet access – which will eventually open up a wide range of streaming and interactive video and audio to consumers – as the key to what's left of the New Economy.
"We're in pretty bad shape with only 5 million families having broadband access," said Jim Glassman, host of Tech Central Station and the optimistic co-author of Dow 36,000. "This broadband failure is definitely having an effect on the economy."
With the economy slowing and constituents wondering why they feel like road kill on Al Gore's Infobahn, Congress thinks it knows what went wrong. Too bad they can't agree on how to fix it.
Probably the biggest roadblock on the way to broadband is the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Despite differing views as to what needs to be done to fix it, almost everyone traces the problems with broadband back to that law, which was the product of months of tense negotiations and countless compromises.
The basic idea behind the 1996 law was that the Bell monopolies must open their local networks to allow competition into the market for local telephone service. As an incentive to open their networks, the Bells were offered a carrot: Open the lines, and you can enter the market for long-distance service.
That part of the Telecom Act is called Section 271, and it requires the Bells to obtain certification from state utility boards that their networks have been sufficiently opened to allow competition.
And that's where the problems seem to have started. Since the act had a carrot but no stick, critics charge, the Bells faced no real penalties for not opening their networks.
"It's been five years. There's (sic) only five states where the local Bell companies have been approved to have opened up their markets," Glassman said.
Even in the states where the Bells have theoretically opened up, Glassman remains skeptical about the existence of meaningful competition.
"As somebody who lives in New York, the notion that the Bells have been doing any opening up here is laughable," he said.
With the Bells having to gain certification in most states, the vast majority of the country is left without the services of companies that by all rights should be major players in the high-speed revolution.
Local telephone companies are seemingly ideally suited to bringing broadband into people's homes, given their existing infrastructure. DSL service, though problematic, can bring high-speed service to folks who are nowhere near a cable line.
To the Bells, the answer is simple: Let them enter the data market, which is precisely what Tauzin's bill would do.
"The assumption (in the Telecom Act) was that we had total power in the local marketplace," said Ed Young, vice president for public policy at Verizon, one of the regional Bells. "But we're not the dominant player here. We don't have market power. Right now broadband is controlled by cable."
Tauzin's bill is currently being championed by the Bells, and has left companies like AT&T frothing at the mouth. AT&T vice president Peter Jacoby, talking about Wednesday's vote, called the process "long and divisive. Clearly a lot of concern was expressed by members about the legislation."
Jacoby disagrees with the idea that the Bells would be at a disadvantage in the broadband market. Since they already have strangleholds on their local markets, he argues, they can simply leverage that position into the market for high-speed data and would have little need to innovate.
"Without competition, they're less likely to deploy quickly," Jacoby said. "And when they do deploy they'll have higher prices."
Jacoby, along with many others, thinks the Tauzin bill would be disastrous for the deployment of broadband and says he endorses other approaches instead.
One bill that the Bells' opponents would love to see become law is one offered by Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) in the House Judiciary Committee. Among other things, Cannon's bill would allow the Bells to be prosecuted under antitrust law.
"We're in favor of bringing the antitrust laws into play here on the side of local competition," said AT&T's Jacoby.
Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) has introduced his own legislation through the House Judiciary Committee (co-sponsored by Cannon), directly opposed to Tauzin's bill.
Conyers' bill would prevent any Bell from entering the long-distance market for either data or voice until its market share in the state dropped below 85 percent.
Another bill, this one with the blessing of Tauzin, is being offered by Fred Upton (R-Michigan). Upton's bill would attempt to alleviate the most-criticized portion of Tauzin's bill – that it takes away a major incentive for the Bells to open their networks.
The bill would increase fines against the Bells tenfold if they don't comply with Section 271's network-opening requirements.
Of some comfort to politicians from rural and inner-city districts was an amendment attached to the Tauzin bill Wednesday that would try to force the Bells to embrace broadband, whether they want to or not.
The amendment, offered by Reps. Tom Sawyer (D-Ohio) and Bobby Rush (D-Illinois), requires the Bells to adhere to a 5-year timetable to achieve 100 percent rollout of DSL to all of their central offices.
The Bells are none too happy about this development. "It's going to be very onerous," Verizon's Young said. "I have central offices with 500 lines or fewer," he said. "I'm never going to recoup my investment on that."
Overall, Young thinks that broadband rollout should take its cues more from wireless. "Let the marketplace decide what's going to get rolled out," he said. "Let's jump-start this economy and get the dot-coms going."
That's hardly a controversial statement, but the wealth of different approaches on Capitol Hill isn't helping. "The most important reason that investors are shying away from investing in broadband is the regulatory uncertainty," says Jim Glassman.
