[ Sent Feb 28, 2002 ]

The other day I sent out a bulletin about a bill in Congress, 
the "Tauzin/Dingell" HR1542 bill.  I wanted to follow up to let
you know what happened.

[ If you're thinking, "what bulletin?" you may not have seen it.  I
  deleted the bulletin as soon as the voting was finished, so if you
  hadn't checked your mail for a few days, you might not have received
  it.  You can go to:

     http://www.mv.com/issues/tz.shtml

  to read about it and see the original note. ]

HR1542 is a bill which serves to do away with many of the competitive
provisions of the Telcommunications Act of 1996, remove obligations
from the regional Bell monopolies to share the public infrastructure
(paid for by you) with competitors, and allow the Bell companies to
establish monopoly positions in high speed Internet services over the
telephone system.  I wrote to you to make you aware of this bill and
to ask for your help in opposing it.  The support that we received
from our customers was amazing- just to judge from the number of
emails copied to me and to mv-admin.  I'm very appreciative of all of
your efforts- I'm sorry I wasn't able to reply to most of the mail
that I received.

As for the result, there's bad news and good news.

On February 27, the House voted on HR1542 and passed it with a
substantial majority.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that
Rep. John Sununu voted against the bill.  I don't know whether he was
swayed by your response (only he can really tell) but I like to think
so.  If you feel inclined, a letter or call of thanks would probably
not be a bad idea.  (See the contact info in the web page mentioned
above.)

While Rep Bass did vote for the bill, I would not direct any bad
feelings to him for that vote.  This was a very complex and ambiguous
bill, probably confusing by design, and the unusual process of its
introduction did not help.  We have to assume that our representatives
*are* trying to do right by us and be thankful that they are at
least engaged in the process.  If there was a failure, I think it was
in the ISP and telecom industry, in not making the details clear in
the limited time that we had, and in the misleading characterizations
by its proponents as promoting "Internet Freedom" and competition.

Muddying up the picture is that the bill is expected to fail in
the Senate.  Representatives on the fence or unclear of the implications
of the bill may have been inclined to simply give it a pass because
of that.

The problem with its passage in the House, even if it fails in the
Senate, is in the FCC.  In what appears to be an end run around
Congress, the FCC has recently issued a notice of proposed rulemaking,
declaring that it (the FCC) will also be working to do away with
many competitive provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Tauzin/Dingell's overwhelming passage in the House tells the FCC that
they have huge support in this effort, and that's what we had hoped
to avoid.  

You might want to check the http://www.mv.com/issues area now and
then for more updates.

Thanks again for your support.  

Mark Mallett
President
MV Communications, Inc.