New Telecom Bill Important for US Growth
(7/27/2005)
Earlier today Senator John Ensign, Chairman of the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force and Chairman of Senate Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Technology, Innovation, and Competitiveness, introduced a bill that proposed to end economic regulation of the telecommunications industry.
Called the Broadband Consumer Choice Act of 2005, this bill is the answer to outsourcing of U.S. jobs abroad. If passed, this will trigger massive – and much needed – capital spending on fiber optics and high-speed networks, giving American workers the tools they need to compete with China and India. This is a free market alternative to the invasive 1996 Telecom Act that created the total collapse of telecom investment in the U.S. in the last 5 years – rendering the U.S. 16th in the world in high-speed telecommunication access.
This legislation restores property rights, removes price controls, moves most issues from the state to the natiopnal level, and deals with both the video franchise issue that has been holding up fiber deployment and the municipal broadband controversy. It is very similar to the recommendations we made in the telecom study we wrote for the US Chamber of Commerce last fall. I think it could add 200,000 jobs and and generate upwards of $600 billion of GDP, resulting in higher productivity growth and lower inflation and interest rates over the course of the next 5 years.
This is not just a regulatory issue – telecommunications is the central nervous system of our economy. Telecom and technology policy should be the number one agenda item in every discussion of economic growth in Washington.
Cleverly, the bill carves out universal service issues from the bill to be dealt with in separate legislation. Universal service is the biggest pot of pork in Washington, more than $6 billion last year. This improves the chances the bill will actually be passed this fall.
I have my fingers crossed on this one.