AMENDED TAUZIN-DINGELL BILL ADDRESSES LINE-SHARING ISSUE
Amended version of Bell deregulatory legislation introduced by House Commerce Committee Chmn. Tauzin (R-La.) and ranking Democrat Dingell (Mich.) would require ILECs to provide competitive carriers with access to network elements previously mandated by FCC, move that some CLECs said would leave intact legislation that would be harmful to competition but otherwise was positive step. However, manager’s amendment to HR-1542 wouldn’t change bill’s exception to FCC line-sharing order, which avoids placing mandate on ILECs to “provide [CLECs with] unbundled access to the high frequency portion of the loop at a local terminal.”
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Amended bill “purports to save line sharing” but would put “Band-Aids on issues where there are gaping holes,” ALTS Pres. John Windhausen said. He said Tauzin and Dingell recognized that elimination of line-sharing requirements as called for in bill approved by Telecom Subcommittee was vulnerable to attack from opponents in full committee. “But it’s still a very, very bad bill,” he said: “We're still going all the way to oppose the bill.” Windhausen said it failed to safeguard Commission’s unbundled network element (UNE) remand order, critical element needed to fully protect FCC line-sharing order. “You can’t have one without the other,” he said, “they're inextricably linked.”
CompTel saw no improvements in bill. “Under the guise of compromise, the substitute bill would now actually relieve the RBOC cartel of any meaningful obligation to connect with competitors,” CompTel Pres. Russell Frisby said. “The Bell monopolies don’t want to abide by the laws of competition. Congress should not aid and abet this behavior.”
Manager’s amendment is “common-sense compromise” crafted by Tauzin to address concerns raised by subcommittee members, Tauzin spokesman Ken Johnson said. He rejected CLEC industry criticism of amendment as unfounded. “We will never go far enough to satisfy the CLECs,” he said. “If they weren’t faulting this, they'd be faulting something else.”
Reps. Harman (D-Cal.) and Davis (R-Va.) late Tues. were working on amendment to be introduced at committee markup that would address minimum data speed of services exempted from regulation by bill, Harman spokeswoman said. Details weren’t available, but Davis amendment that had been introduced but excluded at subcommittee markup (CD April 27 p1) would have increased that minimum speed to 1.5 Mbps from current 384 kbps.