House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas) has no plans to follow the advice of Verizon Communications Inc. that the House should work on a telecommunications bill limited to the removal of cable-franchising entry barriers, Baron's spokesman said Friday.
"We are still planning on going with regular order -- subcommittee, then full committee markup -- with a comprehensive broadband-regulatory-reform bill similar to what we proposed already in our draft bill," Barton spokesman Terry Lane said.
Earlier Friday, Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president of public affairs and communications, said House leaders should look at legislative action in states that have made it easier for phone companies to enter cable markets. Texas, for example, enacted statewide franchising last year, eliminating the need for town-to-town approvals.
"They have, of course, to decide what they want to do, but if they want to get off the dime here, it may be that they want to take a look at a little slightly different approach," Tauke told reporters at a briefing.
Barton's broad telecommunications bill has failed to generate wide support, creating the need for a more narrow solution, Tauke said.
"We've worked at it for one year now, and this package does not yet have wings," he added. "If you can't get the whole loaf, let's take a portion of it."
Barton released a draft bill last year that would link video-entry regulatory relief to deployment of advanced networks. The draft also addressed Internet-discrimination policies and the ability of local governments to compete for broadband-access customers, among other things.
Tauke indicated that with a 2006 legislative calendar shortened by election-year considerations, a broad overhaul of telecommunications law appeared to be too ambitious.
"Frankly, the House may want to consider looking at some of the experience in the states where the approach to video entry has been to look at the new entrants and how you ease entry, rather than looking at this [broadband Internet-transmission service] approach that has been the focus of the attention in the House," he added.
A House GOP telecommunications-policy aide said recently that the House Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee would vote out the bill in February and the full committee would act before Easter (April 16).
Barton, Lane said, is determined to move the bill in its current form.
"Clearly, it's a priority for the chairman, and we are going to work it in as soon as possible," Lane added. "I think it's premature to start talking about separating portions out of his bill. We certainly haven't been talking about it."
