Here are the basic rules of how big corporations jockey for position in the Washington telecom power struggle, and how this struggle will really affect your users' ability to get high-speed access in the future. Each of these four groups and several others uses the universally expressed desire to improve the Internet as its raison d' tre, even when what each group is really aiming at is a technical change in the nation's telecom laws. Each group employs former members of Congress and top officials of the Reagan, Bush or Clinton administrations to pitch its message. But forget Republican vs. Democratic distinctions you can't predict which party partisans will join which group. Some of the groups have hedged their bets and hired well-known operatives from both parties.
Code words are important.
Yet most of them have little or nothing to do with e-commerce taxes or the regulation of Internet content. Instead, they're actually bills loosening or tightening regulations on different types of telecom giants. Some political insiders say all this activity is nothing more than an attempt by enormous carriers to leverage an interest in the Internet in order to get politicians to pick winners and losers in the ongoing guerrilla war of telecom regulation. To see how this works, take a look at the four principal lobbying groups, what companies support them and their policy goals. For most of the Bell companies, it's the reverse.