Alcatel Says New 'BITS' Law Would Be Good for Broadband

Tim Krause, Alcatel's chief marketing officer and senior vice president for government relations, reportedly testified before the Telecommunications and Internet Subcommittee of the U.S. House today.

After that, Alcatel released a statement endorsing new draft legislation coming out of the Subcommittee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The draft legislation is called the Broadband Internet Transmission Services ("BITS") Act.

Today's announcement says that the following statement can be attributed to Krause:

"Alcatel endorses the BITS Act, and requests the Committee move it forward in the legislative process without delay. The BITS Act will ensure the continued growth of the U.S. broadband market by creating legal and regulatory certainty for the services that flow over powerful new broadband networks, such as the IPTV networks being built by Alcatel for U.S. telecommunications carriers, in several ways:

"First, it generally protects nascent broadband services from regulation at the Federal, State, and local level, and does so in a socially conscious manner by preserving important public policies, such as E911.

"The bill creates a streamlined Federal video franchise process for broadband video services that will ensure they can be a key driver of continued broadband deployment immediately. The BITS Act achieves this goal while protecting the ability of municipalities to manage their local rights of way, as well as the video franchise fee revenue streams they have come to rely on.

"Alcatel also supports the inclusion into the BITS Act of Internet Neutrality principles, which promotes consumer broadband demand, as well as protections for municipal entry into the broadband market when necessary."

The Alcatel statement is somewhat at odds with a statement issued yesterday by Google's Vinton Cerf (see "Vint Cerf Urges House Committee to Preserve Neutral Internet Architecture"). Cerf worries that the BITS Act in current form would be bad for consumers and for the development of broadband in the U.S. His statement in part says:

"My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity. Allowing broadband providers to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need."

Both the Alcatel and Cerf statements advocate 'Internet neutrality principles,' but I'm not sure Cerf and Krause would agree on exactly what that requires.

AB -- 11/9/05