WASHINGTON—The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a telecom-reform measure late Thursday that includes a plan to make Voice over Internet Protocol providers pay into the universal-service fund. But the House rejected a strict network-neutrality provision.
Strike three and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House telecommunications subcommittee, was out. Markey had tried three times to amend the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006—the Cope Act, as the House telecom-reform bill is officially known—and each time he was outmaneuvered by the telephone and cable companies.
This time it was an amendment by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) that did Markey in. Smith, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, was allowed to offer an amendment explicitly saying that nothing in the bill precluded lawsuits based on antitrust laws even though a stricter network-neutrality amendment by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was not allowed.
The Smith amendment was an attempt to allow members to say they voted for network neutrality even though the amendment did nothing on the issue, charged Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).
“It is meant to tell members who are in favor of network neutrality that they can vote for this, but it does absolutely nothing for network neutrality,” said Lofgren.
The ploy apparently worked. The Smith amendment passed by a vote of 353-68—nearly 200 more lawmakers voted for the Smith amendment than for the Markey amendment.
The Markey amendment would have codified network neutrality by prohibiting blocking, degrading and/or restricting access to content—things the wireless industry routinely does today on its broadband networks. The House voted 169-252 against the Markey amendment.
The result was the opposite for Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), co-chair of the telecommunications subcommittee of the House Rural Caucus. For Stupak, the third time was the charm. Stupak’s amendment allows the Federal Communications Commission to impose universal service and intercarrier-compensation obligations on Voice over Internet Protocol providers. “This amendment makes a good bill better. It extends the universal-service fund to VoIP,” said Stupak.
Stupak had tried and failed to add the amendment at both the subcommittee and full committee level. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, is ideologically opposed to universal service.
“I think the universal-service fund needs at a minimum to be significantly reformed. I do not think, as we deploy new technologies, we should saddle these new technologies with a new tax,” said Barton, even as he backed down from seriously opposing the amendment.
By including a universal-service provision, the House has a bargaining chip with the Senate, which is expected to include strong universal-service language in its bill.
Missing from the bill is language giving liability protection to both VoIP carriers and public-safety answering points when they handle 911 calls. The National Emergency Number Association, which has pushed hard for VoIP liability parity, withdrew its support for the bill.
“As it currently stands, without liability, NENA cannot support the telecommunications-reform bill,” said Patrick Halley, NENA director of government affairs.
