Next Congress To Focus On FCC Reform

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January 01, 1999 (9:24 AM EST)

By Mary Mosquera,

Supporting e-commerce and reforming the Federal Communications Commission are two issues at the top of the incoming Congress's high-tech agenda, House and Senate committee leaders said.

Online privacy and encryption are the thorniest Internet-related issues left over from the last Congress and deeded to the 106th Congress when it picks up Jan. 6. There is also unfinished legislative business having to do with spam, or junk e-mail, and Internet gambling.

Lawmakers have been gunning for the FCC because they believe regulations have blocked competition in phone markets promised by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Many Republican lawmakers have also been incensed by the FCC's e-rate program, which offers discounts to schools and libraries that want to get wired.

Lining up to curb the FCC's authority are Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Rep. Tom Bliley (R-Va.), chairman of the House Commerce Committee, and Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, (R-La.), chairman of the Commerce Committee's Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection subcommittee.

"We've got a horse-and-buggy agency trying to bridle a supersonic technology."
-- Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.)

"I am platform neutral -- it doesn't matter to me whether people receive telecommunication services by cable, satellite, streaming, wires, wireless cable, or mental telepathy," Bliley said. "They deserve a choice, and the lower prices and better services that come from competition."

Tauzin has said he wants to reform the communications regulatory agency from top to bottom. "It is painfully obvious that the FCC structure has become a roadblock to competition," said Tauzin's spokesman, Ken Johnson.

The problem, Tauzin said, is not the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but how it is being interpreted by the FCC. "We've got a horse-and-buggy agency trying to bridle a supersonic technology," he said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Bliley will focus their legislative efforts on the building blocks of the Internet, including ensuring privacy for online consumers. Hatch said he may try to change criminal or civil-rights laws. He also wants regulation that better protects information databases from theft.

Hatch also plans to examine antitrust laws and their impact on high-tech competition and intellectual-property rights, and to pursue more remedies to resolve Y2K disputes, such as fact-finding masters and special courts.

Bliley hopes to develop guidelines for authentication of electronic signatures to spur more e-commerce and try to resolve the stalemate on encryption and ease restrictions on data-scrambling products.

"There is a role for government in the Internet, not in regulating electronic commerce, but in making sure that basic building blocks and basic principles for electronic commerce to thrive are in place," said Bliley.

Bliley will also spearhead legislation to complete the international satellite privatization process, which is supposed to bring prices down, and to require that network programming be available to satellite-TV providers.

Tauzin also wants to jump start competition in cable, which he believes is a virtual monopoly. "All hell's going to break loose if cable rates rise when cable is deregulated as of March 31, 1999," Johnson said.

The November elections made little change in the membership of either the House or Senate Commerce Committees, through which most Internet legislation must pass. But whether Congress can pass legislation is another question. If the Senate goes forward with a trial of President Clinton, some Capitol Hill watchers fear unprecedented gridlock.

"I think the Senate will move quickly to put it behind us," a senior House Commerce staffer said.