BARTON BILL AMENDMENTS CLAIM TO ANSWER CRITICS ON NET NEUTRALITY AND REDLINING; DEMS, CONSUMER GROUPS ARE NOT CONVINCED

Henry Gomez points to a News.com story about "manager's amendments" to the telecom bill, circulated in advance of today's markup session in the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Here's a similar story from Broadcasting & Cable. The amendments give the FCC more explicit authority to punish "national franchise" cable/Internet providers for violations of the agency's own net neutrality policy and strengthen the bill's language against economic redlining. From the B&C article:

As advertised, the bill, which is being amended Wednesday, will contain stronger anti-red-lining language (red lining is not serving lower income and other less profitable customers) and stronger enforcement power over violations of the FCC's network neutrality principles, which encourage nondiscrimination in the provision of Internet service.

The bill will require the FCC to adjudicate complaints within 90 days, up the fine for violations to $500,000 per, and give the FCC additional enforcement authority.

The bill also allows for periodic audits of the national franchisee to make sure they are paying their franchise and PEG (public, educational and government) channel fees.

But Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey, a Democrat on the subcommittee who plans to introduce his own amendments in the markup session, is unconvinced:

Markey remains concerned about the bill's lack of buildout requirements for either new video entrants or cable incumbents once they, too, seek a national franchise. That, he says will allow companies to bypass some lower-income areas and to raise rates in others to subsidize competition for more lucrative customers.

Or, as Ben Scott of Free Press puts it in an email:"[The B&C article] leaves out the fact that the anti-redlining language is still a white wash job that leaves investigation and enforcement of redlining in all US towns and cities to the FCC, a federal agency with no track record of enforcing anything at the local level effectively."

Update: The Barton Bill, with the "manager's amendments", was approved by the subcommittee late today by a vote of 27 to 4, according to the National Journal's Insider Update. The four "no" votes were Democrats Dingell, Markey, Eshoo, and Doyle.

The closest vote of the day in the subcommittee, which includes eighteen Republicans and fifteen Democrats, was the 22-11 defeat of a Dingell/Markey anti-redlining amendment -- requiring the regional Bell operating companies,as they enter local cable TV markets with their brand-new national franchises, to “build out” services to all customers within each community. Another Dingell/Markey proposal to put more teeth in the bill's "Net neutrality" provision went down 23-8.

The bill now goes to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for action in late April or early May, and then to the full House (possibly with a stop at the Judiciary Committee).

(I'm told that Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown, a subcommittee member, was absent from the markup session... though I don't know how to reconcile that with the reported 33 votes cast on the Dingell/Markey "buildout" amendment.)