Date: 2006-06-08
Speaker: LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. this rule provides 1 hour of general debate. equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The -rule also provides one motion to recommit. with or without instructions. Mr. Speaker. for virtually every telecommunications service. consumers have a choice over which service they can obtain. They can comparison shop and get the deal they feel is best for their family based on service and on price. The reason- that consumers can choose the best telecommunications deal for their family is because most telecommunications services are part of a competitive business. How6ver. unfortunately. this is not true for video services. The lack of competition for cable television service means poorer service. higher prices. and less innovation for new products and services. Mr. Speaker. it is time we allow competition for video services. The Federal Communications Commission has found that less than 2 percent of markets have facetoface cable television competition. In the other 98 percent of markets where there is no facetoface competition. cable rates have increased approximately 85 percent since 1995. When there is competition. cable rates drop. According to the General Accounting Office. cable competition leads to a 15 percent decrease in costs for consumers. Bringing competition to long -distance and wireless services has brought lower costs for consumers. For example. since 1995. the cost for long distance telephone service has fallen approximately 50 percent. The cost of wireless minutes has fallen approximately 77 percent. This act. the COPE Act. removes barriers to entry for new coripetitors in the video services market by establishing clear Federal standards to replace the outdated local franchise approval process. There are over 34.000 local franchise authorities. Negotiating just one local franchise can take years. Now. imagine. Mr. Speaker. negotiating 34.000 such agreements. One company official testified that. for example. if AT&T signed a franchise agreement every day. it would take more than 7 years to complete its deployment plan. Signing all of these agreements is prohibitively expensive to companies interested in offering video service. This system impedes entry by new competitors. and consumers end up .paying the price. Even though companies will be able to get a national or a State .franchise instead of negotiating with each of the local authorities. the local authorities will still retain many of their rights under the current system. The local franchise authorities. for example. will still have the right to manage their rightsofway. They will receive a franchise fee of up to 5 percent of gross revenues. In addition to the franchise fee. they can receive an additional 1 percent for public. educational and governmental. so called PEG. channels and institutional networks. This bill includes stringent antidiscrimination provisions. A cable operator will not be able to deny access to its cable service to any group of potential residential cable service subscribers in a franchise area because of the income of that group. Any complaint filed by a local authority with the FCC must be completed in 60 days. If the FCC finds discriminatory practices against a group. the FCC must ensure that the cable operator extends access to that group within a reasonable period of time. The FCC may also order that the cable operator pay penalties of up to $500.000 per day. per violation to the franchise authority. In addition. Mr. Speaker. to improving cable competition. this legislation also provides the FCC with explicit authority to enforce its broadband policy statement. The statement has four principles that the FCC can enforce with regard to net neutrality. Those are that consumers are entitled to. first. access to lawful Internet content of their choice. two. run applications and services of their choice subject to the needs of law enforcement. three. connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.. and. four. competition among network providers. application. and service providers. and content providers. Consumers are entitled- to that as well. Mr. Speaker. this legislation was introduced by Chairman BARTON and reported out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by a bipartisan vote of 4212. Most impressive. This is good legislation that will bring competition to cable television finally in this country and lower the price of video services to consumers. I would like to thank Chairman BARTON and Chairman UPTON and Representati e RUSH for their hard work and their leadership on this very important issue. I urge my colleagues to support both the rule and the underlying legislation. Mr. Speaker. I reserve the balance of my time.