Archives: TV & Radio

April 4, 2006

Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet

Committee on Energy and Commerce

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 21515

Dear Representative: 

When the Subcommittee takes up the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act tomorrow, we urge your support for amendments that address the bill’s significant consumer protection shortcomings.

While the legislation laudably protects community rights to establish broadband networks, it eliminates other protections that ensure all residents have access to competitive, advanced communications services. The legislation abolishes communities’ authority to ensure all residents are served by new and existing cable providers without establishing reasonable build-out requirements in its place, opening a wide door to redlining. It rolls back state and local authority to establish and enforce strong consumer protections without providing for strong federal consumer protections. It leaves resolution of the tens of thousands of consumer complaints in the hands of the Federal Communications Commission, which lacks the resources and ability to address them. And, without providing for strong, enforceable prohibitions on broadband network discrimination, it simultaneously strips the FCC of its authority establish network neutrality rules, leaving consumers exposed to anticompetitive tactics that will reduce competition and inflate consumer prices. In short, the legislation not only fails to ensure that consumers will benefit from new video competition, it exposes them to the risk of higher cable and broadband rates, reduced service quality and reduced access to competitive choices offered via the Internet.

We urge the Subcommittee to adopt amendments that will:

• Ensure that low- and middle-income consumers will benefit from new cable competition by requiring that new entrants comply with reasonable build-out requirements.
• Ensure that cable incumbents cannot backslide on their existing obligations to upgrade and provide service throughout a franchise area.
• Ensure that incumbent cable companies cannot lower rates charged to wealthy consumers in neighborhoods served by a competitor and subsidize that decrease by hiking rates in low and middle income neighborhoods left unserved by the new entrant.
• Ensure states and localities retain the ability to establish and provide for meaningful enforcement of strong customer service requirements and other consumer protection regulations.
• Provide meaningful and enforceable prohibitions on broadband network discrimination that impedes consumer access to lawful content; prevent their use of nonharmful devices; and restricts their ability to send, receive and use content, applications or services.
• Prevent broadband network owners from charging Internet service and content providers fees to access to their broadband networks.
• Eliminate the roll-back of FCC’s authority to issue rules on network neutrality.

These amendments will help reduce the risks the bill poses to consumers and improve the likelihood that the benefits of new video competition reach those who most need it. A national franchise system with strong consumer protections and appropriate provisions to meet local needs could foster new video competition and discipline ever-rising cable rates. Unfortunately, the Committee Print not only fails to ensure the national franchising system will benefit consumers, it represents a significant step backward in consumer protection and competition.  

Respectfully,

Jeannine Kenney, Senior Policy Analyst, Consumers Union    

Mark Cooper Director, Consumer Research, Consumer Federation of America           

Ben Scott Director, Public Policy, Free Press

Edmund Mierzwinski, Director, Consumer Program, U.S. Public Interest Research Group