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Press Release

Upton Hearing Examines Draft to Create a New Statutory Framework for IP and Broadband Services

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, today convened a hearing on a staff discussion draft of legislation to create a statutory framework for Internet Protocol (IP) and broadband services.

Upton’s full opening statement is provided:

Good morning. Today’s hearing is on a staff draft to create a new statutory framework for Internet Protocol and broadband services. The draft would update our communications laws to keep pace with the dramatic changes in technology and consumer demand which have transpired since passage of the 96 Act. In my opinion, such an update is overdue.

In planning the Subcommittee’s agenda for this Congress, I wanted to chart an ambitious course for enactment of reform legislation by the end of this Congress. This year, the Subcommittee held four hearings on how IP-enabled services are changing the face of communications in the voice, video, and data services marketplaces, which only underscores my desire to get this done this Congress.

Part and parcel of my desire to enact legislation this Congress, I want this to be bipartisan legislation. To this end, Chairman Barton and I, along with the Ranking Committee Member Dingell, Ranking Subcommittee Member Markey - and our staffs -- have been working for months -- in good faith -- to achieve bipartisan consensus. I believe much progress has been achieved, and I am encouraged that we will, in fact, achieve bipartisan consensus.

In light of a dwindling number of days potentially left in this legislative year, Chairman Barton and I decided that it was important to move the process along by publicly releasing the staff draft before us today and holding this legislative hearing. I appreciate the complete cooperation of both Mr. Dingell and Mr. Markey on this hearing, which resulted in our diverse and lengthy list of witnesses before us today, and I appreciate all of our witnesses for being here. I particularly want to welcome Mr. Hap Haasche, who is from Kalamazoo, Michigan, for being with us today on behalf of the Alliance for Community Media.

I want to say that I look forward to continuing our bipartisan discussions with Mr. Dingell and Mr. Markey - not to mention all Members on both sides of the aisle -- as we move beyond this hearing and toward an eventual mark-up in this Subcommittee and beyond. In order to quell the rumor mill, let me state for the record that we will NOT be marking-up this bill next week, and it was never our intention to do so. But let me also be clear: this bill is one of my highest priorities and I intend to work with Chairman Barton to move it. We have examined these issues for almost a year now, and it is time for Committee action.

In terms of the substance, this staff draft rightly creates a new statutory framework for IP and broadband service that emphasizes a reliance on market forces in this competitive and dynamic sector, and I want to focus right now on one key element of this framework. The staff draft before us attempts to streamline the franchise process for broadband video service providers in order to expedite the entry of a new, third competitor into the video marketplace. Such competition, and the sooner the better, will be good for consumers.

Moreover, the staff draft makes sure that if we are going to depart from the legacy franchise model, that it is for a service which is different than today’s cable service.

However, in creating a streamlined franchise process for broadband video services, the staff draft attempts to preserve critically important elements of the legacy franchise mechanism, namely: (1) a 5% franchise fee; (2) PEG carriage requirements; and (3) an explicit preservation of local government’s police powers related to the orderly and safe use of its rights of way, including the time, place, and manner for construction.

In addition, the staff draft not only prohibits redlining, but also preempts state laws which prohibit municipalities from building their own broadband networks and offering their own broadband video services. That way, if a municipality wants to serve any or all of its citizens, it can do so. [I would ask unanimous consent to place in the record letters from the APPA and Tropos Networks in support of the municipal broadband provision in the staff draft].