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from: National Journal

Senate Panel Releases Report On Its Telecom Bill

(Monday, October 2) The Senate Commerce Committee this past weekend released its long-awaited report on telecommunications legislation that it approved in late June. The 283-page report provides additional detail about the measure and includes a dissent from prominent Democrats.

The report – released as Congress left Washington for a pre-election recess -- emphasizes that the main objective of the bill is to update the nation's communications laws "in a manner that benefits consumers" and that encourages high-speed Internet deployment.

But, in their dissenting views, Senate Commerce ranking member Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, and Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., wrote that the bill "fails to promote innovation and competition by prohibiting broadband network operators from unfairly discriminating against their rivals."

They also complained that the bill would worsen America's "digital divide" between individuals who have technology access and those who lack it -- by failing to require "uniform" upgrades of telecom and cable networks, eliminate longstanding consumer protections and override state video-franchising laws.

The full report is available on the Web site of the Senate Commerce Committee: www.commerce.senate.gov

Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, has been trying for months to round up the votes necessary to bring the legislation before the full Senate.

Stevens late last month vowed to bring up the bill during a post-election, “lame-duck” session slated to begin in mid-November – but acknowledged he remained several votes short of the super-majority of 60 senators needed to cut off a possible filibuster of the measure.