Well, the Senate Commerce Committee just finished its three-day markup of S. 2686, the "Communications, Consumers’ Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act" (aka "COPE Act Lite") and approved it 15-7. Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said just yesterday that he didn't think the bill would make it to the Senate floor unless he could find 60 votes for it. Does this mean he found them? Which side is he counting Mike Dewine on?
Harold Feld posted a great summary of the bill's good and bad points at wetmachine Monday. After two days in the sausage machine, the final bill apparently hasn't changed much. The biggest (and closest) vote happened around 4 this afternoon, when the Snowe/Dorgan Net Neutrality amendment failed 11-11 (a tie means it loses). All Democrats voted yes, all Republicans except Snowe herself voted no. A John Kerry amendment strengthening the bill's anti-redlining language also failed.
As Harold points out, the bill is mildly better for cities than the House's COPE Act. It leaves cities in charge of cable and IPTV franchising but imposes a 90-day time limit to approve franchise applications, requires use of a standard application designed by the FCC, and otherwise severely limits the city's negotiating options. It also clearly allows selective buildouts (cherrypicking, redlining) within a community, just like COPE. And it removes cities from the list of agencies that have to approve the mid-franchise transfer of a cable company to new owners.
The bright spot in the bill is the municipal networking section, which, like COPE, prevents state legislatures from shutting down city broadband projects. (This provision handily survived an attempt by Democrat Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia to gut it.) While the Senate version adds a couple of hoops for muni broadband projects to jump through, the end result is a solid win for the Community Right To Network. Nice, but not nice enough to outweigh all the other crud.
So... 60 out of 99 votes needed, and a bright line drawn on Net Neutrality. If the GOP leadership wants this thing to pass, they probably can't let Senator Mike vote the other way this time -- which means Net Neutrality might become a real issue in the Senate race after all.
Then we can enjoy the spectacle of Dewine explaining why he went to bat for a telecom giant that wants to sell off its 800,000 Ohio households because they don't fit into its hot new ultrafast fiber video/Internet plans.
P.S. Do you think Sherrod will ever add "big telecom" to the list of pay-to-play industries Congress should be independent of?