Congress Passes IPTV Franchising Bill, But Ignores Net Neutrality

7:00 am on May 1, 2006 | Category: Internet, Law, Regulation, Telecom Services, Telephone, Television

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A bill allowing telecom providers to provide pay-television services more easily has been approved by a key congressional panel.

The House Commerce Committee voted 42-to-12 in favor of the new legislation, which grants national franchising privileges to telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon. This represents a major victory for both of the big telecom giants, which have spent billions to build ultra-fast internet-based television networks, only to face lengthy and expensive franchising licenses in each city they hope to serve.

Ultimately, this will likely be beneficial to customer’s, by increasing competition in the cable television market, and potentially driving down consumer service costs.

The bill did not, however, include a provision to protect the principal of net neutrality, and stop telecom providers from creating a paid “fast lane” for preferential internet traffic. Without such a restriction, consumer advocates worry that ISPs could demand payment from high traffic websites, and effectively drive competitors, including VoIP providers and internet video companies out of business.

Many lawmakers, however, claim that net neutrality is too hard to define, and that web traffic discrimination isn’t yet providing any major threat to internet-based businesses.

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    1. I find it funny that the big telecoms can appear to be for competition when talking about the national franchise laws, but in the same breath they are against Net Neutrality which is all about fair and expansive competiton.

      I don’t think the MSM reports can see that the telecoms are only for competiton when it is in their favor. All they see is “more cable companies must be good for competiton” they don’t stop to explore the Net Neutrality aspects or the fact that they all oppose municipal WiFi networks which would compete with their internet service.

      – Tom

      Comment by Red Bank Tom — May 2, 2006 #

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