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Prepared Witness Testimony The House Committee on Energy and Commerce
The Regulatory Status of Broadband Services: Information Services, Common Carriage, or Something in Between?
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
Ms. Debbie Goldman
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Debbie Goldman. I am the Policy Chair of the Alliance for Public Technology. I am also a Research Economist with the Communications Workers of America. Today, I am representing the Alliance. For nearly fifteen years, the Alliance for Public Technology, or APT, has promoted the benefits of universal, affordable deployment of broadband and advanced telecommunications services. Many members of APT represent traditionally underserved communities, including rural residents, minorities, people with disabilities, low-income households, and senior citizens. It is critically important for the FCC to establish a regulatory framework that encourages investment in broadband technology to ensure affordable access for all Americans. High-speed Internet access provides a multitude of social benefits, from economic development and health care, to education and lifelong learning for workers, to public safety and independence for people with disabilities. I will include in the record a recent APT report entitled "A Broadband World: The Promise of Advanced Services." The report highlights the many social and economic benefits of broadband technology. It finds that the benefits of broadband technology grow exponentially - and prices become more affordable - as more people are connected to a broadband network. Thus, public policy must ensure universal, affordable broadband deployment in order to serve economic and social goals. It is imperative, therefore, that the FCC gets the regulatory framework right for broadband services. The FCC must adopt a common regulatory framework for all broadband services, regardless of the technology. The nascent broadband market is characterized by fierce cross-platform competition between cable and wireline telephony. But cable modems are beating DSL 2 to 1, in large part due to regulatory advantages. The framework must facilitate a robust marketplace where multiple providers compete on a level regulatory playing field to offer consumers a variety of services at attractive prices. It must encourage investment in next-generation broadband networks. The FCC took at step in the right direction in its Triennial Review. Freeing wireline carriers' broadband networks from unbundling and retail price regulation gets the investment incentives right. The framework must also continue the openness that has characterized the Internet in the narrowband environment, where content providers have nondiscriminatory access to the networks. Regulatory policy must ensure that broadband networks remain open to all content providers, so that users have access to diverse information sources of their own choosing. Open networks foster innovation of new services, and demand for even more network capacity. The new broadband regulatory framework must also continue consumer protections that have been so critical in the voice environment. These include accessibility requirements for people with disabilities. Currently, accessibility requirements are required only for voice telephony services. Unless these protections are extended to the broadband environment, many people with disabilities will not be able to access much of the content available over broadband networks. Finally, we must update our universal service support system for the increasingly broadband world. All broadband providers, regardless of the technology, must be required to contribute to the universal service fund. In the current debate about the proper regulatory treatment of broadband, APT has urged the FCC to develop a new regulatory framework for broadband. We have encouraged the FCC to build upon Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, the only section of the Act that specifically addresses advanced telecommunications technology. Section 706 of the Act establishes in law the goal of universal access to advanced telecommunications services by all Americans. Section 706 also provides the FCC with the authority to develop "regulating methods" to achieve that goal. APT believes that the FCC should use the umbrella language of Section 706 to craft a new regulatory framework for broadband. Decades ago, the FCC began a series of proceedings known as Computer I, II, and III. These proceedings were designed to develop a regulatory framework for computer-enabled services that were transmitted over the telephone network. The Commission developed a definition of "information services" that distinguished these unregulated offerings from the regulated, monopoly "telecommunications services." As the current definitional controversy demonstrates, it is becoming increasingly difficult to squeeze broadband into this framework. At the time of the Computer proceedings, none envisioned cable or wireless as technology platforms capable of delivering two-way high-speed digital information to homes and businesses. Yet, today we are experiencing a convergence of different technology platforms, each capable of delivering digital data over high-speed networks. But each technology platform is subject to a different regulatory regime. Constructing a new regulatory framework, consistent with the principles I have outlined, provides multiple advantages. It allows for a single regulatory treatment for all broadband services in a technology neutral fashion. It does not attempt to force broadband into definitions created for different technology platforms. It reduces regulatory barriers to deployment and investment, provides important consumer protections for people with disabilities, and updates the system of universal service support. APT believes this framework can provide a manageable regulatory structure that will increase investment and deployment, create meaningful facilities-based broadband competition between different technologies, and bring the benefits of broadband to more Americans. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
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