Regulatory News – Bell Atlantic’s OSS Problems Spill Out of N.Y.

Posted:  05/2000

It’s a Broadband Bonanza
By Kim Sunderland

In the telecommunications world, maybe Capitol Hill should be referred to as Broadband Hill.

With five pending pro-Bell broadband bills seeking resolution, the issue continues to simmer as the ILECs hold fast to their promise to push hard this year for legislative relief in offering advanced services.

During the United States Telecom Association’s
(www.usta.org) recent National Issues Conference in Washington, for instance, the Rural Telecommunications Modernization Act was unveiled.

Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) say their plan provides tax credits designed to speed up broadband buildout in rural areas.

Rockefeller says the plan offers any company that invests in broadband facilities in rural areas a 10 percent tax credit per year for three years. And companies willing to invest in “the most powerful forms of broadband facilities will receive an every larger tax credit,” he says, of up to 20 percent a year for three years.

“We want to try to give economic reason for you to want to help the economic burden in rural areas,” Rockefeller told USTA conference attendees in March. To ensure the tax credit is focused on the actual need in a particular area, Rockefeller says it will be available only for certain types of investments, such as:

* Broadband local access facilities that will provide the equipment needed for broadband capability, including fiber optics, DSL equipment, wireless enhancements and cable TV network upgrades.

* High-speed broadband services. “We are not interested in narrow-band services,” Rockefeller says.

* Rural areas that are more than 15 miles from any town with more than 25,000 people and that are not within a county with an overall population density of more than 500 people per square mile.

Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.) reports that broadband legislation he introduced last year with Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) now has 170 co-sponsors. The growing support for H.R. 2420 is unsettling news for competitors, who are fighting their own battles on the Hill to keep this and other broadband proposals from seeing positive action this session.

“We have the chance in this Congress to open up broadband,” Tauzin retorts. “It is critical that we get government intervention out of the way so that the marketplace can take over and work.”