TED STRICKLAND'S EXPLANATION OF HIS "COPE ACT" VOTE

Late yesterday afternoon Congressman Strickland responded to the request of this blog for an explanation of his "Yes" vote in Energy and Commerce for the Barton/Rush video-Internet franchising bill (the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Efficiency Act", or COPE Act).

I appreciate Congressman Strickland's prompt, straightforward response.

I also appreciate his commitment to pursue legislation to require "net neutrality" of nationally franchised video-Internet providers. I can't see how this commitment was served by helping send the COPE Act to the floor as a bipartisan proposal, which was the actual effect of Strickland's vote. But it's true that the escalating net neutrality fight can and will continue in other Congressional arenas, so his promise to "continue to strongly support efforts to ensure net neutrality, and ... stand with any effort to ensure fair and comprehensive access to the internet" does mean something.

But net neutrality is not the only issue with this bill. In fact, it's not really the most important issue, even though it's the one getting all the heat. I'm very disappointed that Congressman Strickland's statement simply regurgitates the core AT&T /Verizon argument for national franchising, without even acknowledging the existence of other serious problems at the heart of the bill.

The point of the COPE Act is to strip local communities of their historic leverage over existing and new cable/Internet providers' rates, channel offerings, customer service and neighborhood availability. It transfers their jurisdiction over neighborhood access ("redlining") issues, customer service complaints, public access resources, and even right-of-way disputes to the FCC -- a Washington bureaucracy that has neither the capacity nor the political inclination to deal with these community concerns seriously. (At the Committee's "opening statements" session Tuesday, Rep. Doyle of Pittsburgh had a very interesting comparison of the FCC's total complaint caseload with the much greater volume of cable TV complaints now being handled by local governments.)

By driving municipalities from the franchising table, the bill also eliminates one of the few tools available to communities to fund low-income technology inclusion and access programs. The states have already lost this leverage as "advanced telecommunications" slipped out from under the jurisdiction of public utility regulators. Now it's the cities' turn to lose. Under the COPE Act's federalized franchising system, we'll see no more regulatory negotiations of the kind that have provided most of the resources for community technology in Ohio, especially Cleveland, in the last decade. (See the second half of this post.) And there's no proposal of any kind to compensate states and cities for this lost leverage.

You'd think Congressman Strickland, who hopes to become a Governor who supports community technology centers as well as community broadband partnerships, would be more protective of local powers in this area. Instead, his statement simply repeats the AT&T/Verizon mantra: Federalizing the franchise process will "facilitate competition in the video market so that consumers have more choices and can benefit from lower cable prices. This bill.. will provide consumers with choices and savings that were, to this point, very difficult to realize under current guidelines."

Look, the telecoms don't need national franchising to start competing with cable in Ohio cities and villages. There's nothing stopping AT&T from seeking a local franchise right now to roll out its new LightSpeed service to compete with Time-Warner in Cleveland or Akron. The telecoms would certainly prefer to avoid dealing with local authorities -- for all the reasons described above. But does the Congressman imagine that, if the COPE Act doesn't pass, AT&T and Verizon will just give up on the high-speed converged-media market and leave it all to the cable companies?

As for unserved rural areas, there's nothing in the COPE Act to induce either the telecoms or the cable industry to build out higher-speed services in places where they don't offer DSL or cable modem service now. Do you think they intend to string fiber where they won't string coax or upgrade their copper lines?

The only part of the COPE Act that provides any real balance to its mortal attack on community franchising rights is Title 4, which establishes what could be called a "Community Right to Network". In a nutshell, it says to cities and villages: While you will no longer have any authority over the private companies that use your streets and poles to sell video services, they will no longer be able to stop you (by means of state or Federal legislation) from creating and selling your own public TV or Internet services. If there's not enough competition, the community can build an open infrastructure and lease it to other providers; if parts of the city aren't served by private infrastructures, the community can step in and build its own. If a city wants to build community computer centers or special low-income Internet rates into its own networking plan -- as Philadelphia is doing in its wireless project with Earthlink -- it's free to do so.

I'd have more confidence in Congressman Strickland's position if he showed some understanding of the importance of Title 4, and promised to be "a voice on the front lines fighting" for the Community Right to Network when the telecoms make their inevitable move to strip it from the bill.