Hello, this is Congressman John Dingell and welcome to my podcast. On June 8th, the House of Representatives voted on a telecommunications bill. It will dramatically change how we all get our information, how we watch television, or send e-mail. I voted against the Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement Act. It is a bad bill. It does nothing except take care of the special and vested interests.

The baby bells, the telephone companies, and the cable operators are going to cut a fat hog with this bill. The consumers are able to anticipate only a few things: They are going to get worse service, no guarantee of competition, possible loss of service and almost certainly an increase in rates.

It could be a wonderful argument, and it is often made by the proponents of this bill, that it will lower cable bills and bring consumers choice. What a wonderful argument, but if only it were true. This bill is going to harm our consumers, harm our citizens, and harm commercial users of Internet.

Many of you already know how this bill affects a basic principal of the Internet- neutrality. Net neutrality means that the phone and cable companies that bring Internet service into our homes cannot discriminate on what comes through the wires and cables. All sites and all portals must be treated equally.

Under the bill that was passed, the big communication conglomerates could charge a toll for each site passing through its network of cables and routers. If the web site didn't pay this tax, they could and would be relegated to the slow lane. Consumers will be hurt. One company could make the web sites of another company download slower. Preferred news sites could bypass other traffic. The free market and free exchange of ideas that is central to the Internet would be lost.

But there are other issues that need to be addressed as well, and are just as important as the Net Neutrality debate.

First, the bill will leave many consumers paying higher prices for cable services. There is no general promise of lower prices. In fact, the telephone companies, and listen to this, have been telling Wall Street that the price they get for their services will be higher than cable. That is the competition we are expecting to see under this legislation.

Both new and existing cable providers will, under this bill, be allowed to cherry pick and skim cream, serving only attractive neighborhoods and the highest value of consumers in the way that best suits their balance sheets. The rest of us may very well be left without competitive choice. Further, we may very well face higher cable bills, worse service quality, or even withdrawal of our only provider.

The bill's redlining safeguards are too weak to offer any real protection against discrimination, that is why the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights opposes it. The bill does not stop cable operators from offering inferior service based on a person's race, color, religion, national origin or sex.

Second, communities will find that this bill inexplicably takes control over local rights-of-way. As I mentioned, it hands them, of all things, to the FCC. Now, the FCC knows about as much about street and sidewalk repairs, traffic patterns, and other local concerns as it does about astrophysics, yet the bill lets the FCC overrule the cities with regard to the management of their property, or to make the original decisions in a way that may not be pleasing to citizens or their elected officials.

This is the reason that the League of Cities, the Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties oppose it. These local officials may have even more to worry about because some fees for public access programming and emergency communications will be cut. The FCC will also, under this poorly conceived bill, be required to enforce a national cable franchise. This task should be left to the local authorities who have decades of experience in similar matters as compared to the FCC which has none.

If you want an example of a bad piece of legislation this is it. It is absolutely going to hurt people. We could have written a good piece of legislation but, regrettably, we did not. What this is, is a piece of the purest special interest legislation, something which will benefit the few at the expense of the many, and something which is rather worthy of this Republican-led Congress.

This is John Dingell. Thank you for listening.