If you have been waiting for the giants to take over the Internet, the time and place is now. Small Internet providers have only a few remaining competitive carriers protecting them from being decimated by the RBOCs. This bill will destroy the Telecom Act, and with it the last opportunity for fair pricing for ISPs. The only broadband relief we will see is the sigh of relief by the RBOCs as the last competitor fails. It ignores the fact that RBOCs have, to date, grossly impeded the progress of broadband deployment nationwide, particularly in less-populated, more rural communities where there is little in the way of competition to motivate them to fulfill their commitments.
Competition is the key to the broadband relief.
The Tauzin-Dingell legislation, as proposed, will only serve to strengthen the hold of monopolies and undermine the supposed intent of the legislation by eliminating competition. They have waited for years for the RBOCs to allow them access to the critical technical elements that stand between a back-pedaling economy and the new economy. ISPs don't require the scale of profit a monopoly RBOC requires in order to provision the services their communities need, they only require that the legislative and regulatory environment ensures that they have the opportunity to compete fairly. The Virginia ISP community urges Congress that, rather than kowtowing to the demands of the monopolies by passing the Tauzin-Dingell legislation, that it searches for means by which the monopolies can be forced to comply with the existing Telecommunications Act of 1996. That act alone, on which rural entrepreneurs were willing to bet the farm, holds the only promise for Internet freedom and the real deployment of broadband to all Americans.