National Journal's Technology Daily, July 29, 2005
By Drew Clark

Senate Democrats are still pondering the issues of telecommunications reform, but at least one centrist group in the party is urging new legislation to update and revise the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

In a Tuesday letter to the chairman and senior Democrat of the Senate Commerce Committee, the group Third Way said that "telecom policy is not and should not be a partisan issue. Congress should adopt thoughtful, bipartisan reforms that can spur the U.S. economy and provide economic opportunity and jobs for all."

The letter was signed by six of the seven Democrats who are members of the group: Evan Bayh of Indiana, Tom Carper of Delaware, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ken Salazar of Colorado. The group, which was incorporated in December, calls itself a "strategy center."

"Consumers have vastly more information, more products, more options, and a constant stream of new technologies and new features from which to choose," said a one-page strategy memo mentioned in the letter.

The letter said that the 1996 act "assumed a world that soon ceased to exist. Any future reform must be flexible enough to encompass global changes to the systems we use for communications, information and entertainment."

None of the six signers of the letter sits on the Commerce Committee, although they commended Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and ranking member Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, for holding "listening sessions" on telecom reform and for freshly examining communications law.

The seventh member of the Third Way group, Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., has been discussing the telecom reform legislation introduced Wednesday by John Ensign, R-Nev., according to Senate aides.

In a Wednesday speech, Pryor adopted a cautious tone. "Though the 1996 law is often maligned and, according to its opponents, hopelessly outdated, its basic tenets — to promote competition and to ensure the universal availability of communications services to all Americans — remain as relevant today as they did some nine years ago," he declared.

An aide to a Republican on the Commerce Committee said Ensign's bill provides "a lot to like for Republican and Democrats."

The aide referred to "network neutrality" features and the measure's even-handedness between the regional Bell telecom companies and cable operators. Although Ensign's bill would allow Bells to enter the pay-television marketplace without obtaining franchises from municipalities, cable companies would be similarly freed from the need to obtain local franchises.

Third Way has not taken a position on the Ensign bill, but has articulated principles that do not conflict with the measure. The principles include promoting "increased private investment in both wireline and wireless communications," and allowing "for healthy competition by removing artificial or outdated restrains on the marketplace."

The group works with other centrist think tanks such as the Progressive Policy Institute "to get and develop ideas that we can turn into actual legislation," particularly in the Senate, communications director Matt Bennett said. BellSouth has given money to the group, as have other Bell companies, high-tech and major cable companies, he added.

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